LIFE OF 



CHARLES DICKENS 



BY 



E; SHELTON MAOKElSrZIE, LL.D. 

LITEKAKT EDITOll OF THE "PHILADELPHIA PRESS." 



WITH 



Personal Recollections and Anecdotes ;— Letters by 'Boz,' 

never before published ; — and uncollected 

Papers in Prose and Verse. 



WITH PORTRAIT AND AUTOGRAPH. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS; 

No. 306 CHESTNUT STREET. 



o 



5*' 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



Entered in Stationers' Hall, London, by 
R. SHELTON MACKENZIE. 



DEDICATION. 



TO HON. JOHN W. FOKNEY. 

My Dear Forney, 

I beg leave to dedicate to you, wishing tliat it were 
worthier of your acceptance, this biographical sketch 
of Charles Dickens, knowing, during all the years of 
my relations with you, how warmly you have admired 
the genius of the great and good man whose loss the 
world mourns. In the fulness of his fame, Dickens 
has departed. Of late years, there have been several 
of these public misfortunes. Macaulay and Thackeray 
soon followed Hood and Jerrold ; John Leech left us 
in his prime, and still later, two more of Dickens's 
friends — Maclise, the great painter, and Mark Lemon, 
Editor of Punch — were smitten by the inevitable shaft. 
These men died not much beyond middle age ; but 
nearly all of them were suddenly stricken. Charles 
Dickens, in his fifty-ninth year, has followed, and the 
shock is great; for of him, it might be said, as of 



18 DEDICATION. 

the great Hebrew in the olden time, that when he 
died, "his eyes were not dim, nor his natural force 
abated." 

In the most aristocratic country in the world, 
Charles Dickens stood, not merely among but above 
all his contemporaries as a Man of the People. Scott, 
Bulwer, Macaulay, Thackeray, and others who taught 
great truths through the press, either were of high 
family descent or had received the best education that 
Universities could bestow. Their writings are crowded 
with references to the classic authors of their youth. 
Dickens, son of an obscure Government clerk, whose 
pedigree no one has cared to trace, received only such 
an education as, free of cost, every State in our Union 
bestows upon its children. It has been argued by 
great scholars, that Shakespeare was familiar not only 
with classical but modern European literature ; but 
Dickens was ihaster of one language — that which is 
spoken, not alone in his island-home, but in Asia, in 
Australia, and most of all, in our United States. He 
knew, and was proud in the knowledge, that for every 
one reader he had at home, there were fifty here. 

In the following pages, I have attempted to give a 
sketch of his literary and personal history — stating 
plain facts, introducing some of his correspondence 
never before printed, adding such anecdotes and traits 
of character as illustrate his double position of Man 
of Letters and Man of the People, and stating such 
particulars as have reached me concerning the originals, 



DEDICATION. ]9 

from wliom he is known, or supposed, to have drawn 
many of the characters in his tales. 

In the hody of this volume, I have expressed my 
admiration of the ability of the necessarily rapid 
tributes to the genius and worth of Mr. Dickens, 
which appeared in the American newspapers. I had 
intended to publish the best of these, kindly selected 
for me by Mr. W. W. IsTevin, of Philadelphia, but 
they were so numerous that I had to abandon the 
idea. For assistance rendered, or offered, while I was 
writing this life, (with the temperature ranging at 
from 90° to 96° in the shade,) I am very grateful, and 
would particularly offer my thanks to the Hon. Ellis 
Lewis and Mr. John E. McDonough, of Philadelphia ; 
Mr. Philp and Mr. Solomon, of Washington ; and 
Mr. Henry May Keim, of Reading. An old friend of 
Mr. Dickens, now resident in l^ew York, has placed 
me under great obligations by giving me many of 
his personal reminiscences. 

August 1st, 1870. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

LESSON OF HIS LIFE AND WEITINGS. — CHARACTER OF 
HIS GENIUS. — ANCESTRY. — JOHN DICKENS, THE 
GOVERNMENT CLERK. — HIS FAMILY. — REMOVAL TO 
LONDON. — NEWSPAPER REPORTER. — MICAWBER AND 
MRS. NICKLEBY. — CHARLES DICKENS's EDUCATION. — 
TRUTH IN FICTION. — ROCHESTER VISITED BY THE 
PICKWICKIANS. — WATTS'S HOSPITAL. — CLOISTER- 
HAM. — gad's hill. ------ 29 

CHAPTER II. 

ENGLISH LAWYERS. — ARTICLED CLERKS. — SHORT-HAND 
WRITING. — DICKENS AS A REPORTER. — MIRROR OP 

PARLIAMENT. — TRUE SUN. — MORNING CHRONICLE. 

FIRST AUTHORSHIP.. — WRITING THE " SKETCHES." — 
JOHN BLACK, OUR OLD-TIME EDITOR. — RECOLLECTIONS 
BY N. P. WILLIS. — PUBLISHER. - - - - 44 

CHAPTER III. 

-VARIETY OF THE 
"SKETCHES." — EPIGRAM. — THE DEMOSTHENES OF 
THE TAP. — OLD BAILEY CHARACTERS. — FAGIN AND 
THE ARTFUL DODGER SHADOWED FORTH. — BUMBLE 
AND MRS. GAMP. — CRUIKSHANK'S ILLUSTRATIONS. — 
THE COUNTESS AND THE PUBLISHER. - - - 65 

(21) 



22 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER lY. 

FIRST LAURELS WON. — HOW THE 

WERE BEaUN. — THE SHILLING NUMBER SYSTEM. 

GREEN PAPER COVERS. — LEVER AND THACKERAY. — 
MR. SERGEANT TALFOURD. — COPYRIGHT. — PROPOSED 
NIMROD CLUB. — MR. PICKWICK FOUND AT RICHMOND. 
— RECEPTION OF PICKWICK. — INTRODUCTION OF SAM 
WELLER. — AUTHOR AND PUBLISHERS. — BULWER. — 
THE GREAT LITERARY REVIEWS. — MISS MITFORD'S 
CRITICISM. — SCOTT AND DICKENS.— WHAT PICKWICK 
HAS DONE. — IN A PICKWICKIAN SENSE. — LADY 
jersey's SAM WELLER BALL. - - - - 62 

CHAPTER V. 

" THE WITS' MISCELLANY." — DICKENS EDITS BENTLEY'S. 
— DOUGLAS JERROLD. — ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. — DIC- 
KENS' CONTRIBUTIONS. — OLIVER TWIST. — PURPOSE : 

AND MORAL. — AUTHOR'S LAW. — FAGIN'S CONVICTION. 

— Jacob's island. — dramatic versions. - - 79 



CHAPTER YI. 

publications UNAVOWED or forgotten. — SUNDAY IN 
LONDON. — THE POOR MEN's SUNDAY DINNER. — 
SKETCHES OF YOUNG LADIES AND OF YOUNG GENTLE- 
MEN. — MEMOIRS OF GRIMALDI. — THE PIC-NIC PAPERS. 
— THOMAS MOORE'S PROSE AND VERSE. — DRAMATIC 
PERFORMANCES : THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN, VILLAGE 
COQUETTES, IS SHE HIS WIFE ? — AMATEUR ACTING. — 

author's readings, - 90 



CONTENTS. 23 

CHAPTER YII. 

MARRIAGE. — GEORGE HOGARTH. — A COMPLIMENT FROM 
LOCKHART. — DICKENS A MAN OF METHOD. — THE 
MISSES HOGARTH. — FANNY HOGARTH's SUDDEN DEATH. 
— PUBLICATION SUSPENDED. — MR. DICKENS INTER- 

-'t VATTATn. TjrWZT/a " _ _ „ _ _ 1 Q 



CHAPTER YIII. 

RETIRES FROM BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. — RETROSPECT. 
— YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS. — PICKS UP JOHN BROWDIE 
AND WACKFORD SQUEERS. — NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. — 
DOTHEBOYS hall. — THE CRUMMLES PARTY. — CHEERY- 
BLE BROTHERS. — CHANGE OF PLOT. — AUTHORSHIP 
AVOWED. — PORTRAIT BY MACLISE. — NICKLEBY ON 
THE PARISIAN STAGE. — MR. THACKERAY AND JULES 
JANIN. — CONTINUATION OF NICKLEBY. — TROOPS OF 
FRIENDS. 107 



CHAPTER IX. 

MASTER Humphrey's clock. — its proposed object. — 

ILLUSTRATIONS. — THE WORKS. — AUTHOR's CONFES- 
SION. — MR. PICKWICK AND THE WELLERS REVIVED. 
— THE PRECOCIOUS GRANDSON. — OLD CURIOSITY 
SHOP. — LITTLE NELL. — THOMAS HOOD. — BARNABY 
RUDGE. — RIOTS OF LONDON. — THE RAVEN. — LORD 
JEFFREY. — DINNER AT EDINBURGH. — CHRISTOPHER 
NORTH. — PUBLIC SPEAKING. 117 



24 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

VISIT TO AMERICA. — AT BOSTON. — DICKENS'S DINNER. — 
GEOFFREY CRAYON AND BOZ. — DICKENS AT SUNNY- 
SIDE. — IN PHILADELPHIA. — WASHINGTON. — IN CON- 
GRESS. 133 

CHAPTER XI. 

AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. — PICK- 
WICK READINGS AT A WHITE-SMITH's. — RECEPTION 
OF THE NOTES IN ENGLAND. — OTHER TOURISTS. — 
CHANGE FOR THE NOTES. — LORD JEFFREY'S OPINION. 
— MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. — CRUSADE AGAINST SELFISH- 
NESS. — ENGLISH CRITICISMS. — CHRISTMAS CAROL 
AND ITS FOLLOWERS. — JOURNEY TO ITALY. - - 150 

CHAPTER XII. 

relations with artists. — george cruikshank. — 
tom and jerry. — how oliver twist was brought 
to london. — re-purchasing copyrights. — robert 
Seymour's sketches. — succeeded by " phiz." — 

THE author's last HISTORY OF PICKWICK. — THE 
PALAZZO PESCHIERE IN GENOA. — KIND DEALINGS 
WITH AN ARTIST. -^UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM 
CHARLES DICKENS. 161 

CHAPTER XIII. 

VISIT TO ITALY AND SWITZERLAND. — EDITORSHIP OP 
DAILY NEWS. — LONDON NEWSPAPERS. — PICTURES 
FROM ITALY. — RETURN TO SWITZERLAND. — DOMBEY 
AND SON. — LORD JEFFREY ON THE DEATH OF LITTLE 
PAUL. - 175 



CONTENTS. 25 

CHAPTER XIY. 

ORIGINALS OF FICTITIOUS CHARACTERS. — OLD WELLER 
AND MISS HUDDART. — MR. TRACY TUPMAN AND THE 
FAT BOY. — MRS. BARDELL. — MR. JUSTICE STARE- 
LEIGH. — MR. SERGEANT BUZFUZ. — DODSON AND FOGG. 
— MR. PERKER. — POLICE MAGISTRATE FANG. — VIN- 
CENT CRUMMLES. — W. T. MONCRIEFF. — CHEERYBLE 
BROTHERS. — DANIEL GRANT'S DINNER-PEGS. — MRS. 
NICKLEBY. — SIR JOHN CHESTER. — ALDERMAN CUTE. 
— MR. DOMBEY. — PERCH. — SOL. GILLS. — CAPTAIN 
CUTTLE. — WILKINS MICAWBER. — ESTHER SUMMER- 
SON. — MR. BOYTHORN AND LITTLE NELL. — INSPECTOR 
BUCKET. — CARLAVERO'S ENGLISHMAN. — MR. JULIUS 
SLINKTON. - - - 188 

CHAPTER XY. 

LETTER-WRITING. — EPISTOLATORY MENDICANTS. — A 
NOTE FROM YORKSHIRE. — MR. EWART. — A SLOW 
BINDER. — MASTER HUMPHREY'S " WORKS." — TAL- 
FOURD's post-prandial reading. — LETTERS TO TAL- 
FOURD, FRANK STONE, AND MACKENZIE. — MAMMOTH 
JOURNALS. — THE MOON HOAX. — LORD NUGENT. - 210 

CHAPTER XYI. 

POETRY IN PROSE. — THACKERAY's OPINION. — RYTHMI- 
CAL LANGUAGE. — EXAMPLES FROM SOUTHEY, SHELLEY 
AND DICKENS. — LITTLE NELL's FUNERAL. — LESSON 

OF DEATH TO LIFE. — SMIKE's GRAVE-STONE. 

NIAGARA. — HYMN OF THE WILTSHIRE LABORERS. — 

A WORD IN SEASON. 221 



26 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XYII. 

• 

LITTLE DORRIT. — THE CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE. — 
HARD TIMES. — TALE OF TWO CITIES. GREAT EXPEC- 
TATIONS. — NEW CHRISTMAS STORIES. — OUR MUTUAL 

FRIEND. — AMENDE TO THE JEWS. SYSTEMATIC 

BUSINESS HABITS. — DEALINGS WITH AMERICAN 
PUBLISHERS. 229 

CHAPTER XYIII. 

CHARLES DICKENS'S NAMES. — ODD NAMi:S. — FUTILITY 

OF PERSONAL ARGUMENT. RETORT ON LOCKHART. — 

MAKING FRIENDS. — MR. REE-ACK. — LORD CAMPBELL. 
TEMPERATE HABITS. — UNDERVALUING SHAKES- 
PEARE — WORDSWORTH AND DICKENS — PHILADEL- 
PHIA STREETS. — PERSONAL TASTES. — PITY FOR THE 
FALLEN. — TOWN AND COUNTRY. — LONGING FOR SUD- 
DEN DEATH. JOHN DICKENS AND SHERIDAN. 

CHILDREN. — DOMESTIC TROUBLES. - - - - 238 

CHAPTER XIX. 

FONDNESS FOR THEATRICALS. — AMATEUR ACTING. — 
LORD LYTTON's PLAY.— QUEEN VICTORIA. — WILKIE 
COLLINS'S PLAYS. — CAPTAIN BOBADIL. HANS CHRIS- 
TIAN ANDERSEN AT GAD's HILL. — JERROLD ME- 
MORIAL. — PUBLIC READINGS. SECOND VISIT TO 

AMERICA. 256 

CHAPTER XX. 

SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. — RATIONALE OF HIS READ- 
INGS. — RECEPTION AT BOSTON. — EFFECTS OF THOUGHT 



CONTENTS. 21 

AND TIME. — DRAMATIC POWER. — LONG WALKS. — 
LIST OF SELECTIONS. — CORRESPONDENCE. — LAST 
READINGS IN BOSTON AND NEW YORK. — PRESS BAN- 
QUET AT DELMONICO'S. — LAST WORDS ON THE AMERI- 
CAN NOTES. — AMENDE. — DEPARTURE. - - - 268 

CHAPTER XXI. 

RETURN TO ENGLAND. — IN HARNESS. — A NEW READING. 
— DINNER AT LIVERPOOL. — DANGEROUS ILLNESS. — 
GRAVE-SIDE SPEECH-MAKING. — GAD's HILL HOUSE. — 
MISS CLARKE AT TAVISTOCK HOUSE. — HANS CHRIS- 
TIAN ANDERSEN. — FRANKLIN PHILP. — HABITS OF 
WORK. — LONG WALKS. — M. FECHTER. — CLOSE OF 

1869. 286 

CHAPTER XXII. 

FAREAVELL READINGS. — MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. — 
VISITS QUEEN VICTORIA. — HONORS DECLINED. — 
SPEECH AT ROYAL ACADEMY. — ILL HEALTH. — THE 
LAST WEEK. — CLOSING CORRESPONDENCE. — HIS CHRIS- 
TIAN BELIEF AND HOPE. — APOPLEXY. — ^ DEATH. — 
GRIEF FROM THRONE TO COTTAGE. — BURIAL IN 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. — DEAN STANLEY'S SERMON 
ON CHARLES DICKENS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. - 307 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

PURITY OF HIS WRITINGS. — VARIETY OF SUBJECTS AND 
CHARACTERS. — ABSENCE OF EGOTISM AND CYNICISM. 
— COMPARED WITH THACKERAY. — WILL HIS WRI- 
TINGS LIVE? — HIS DOMESTIC LIFE. — HIS BROAD 



28 CONTENTS. 

CHRISTIANITY. — THE CAIAPHAS OF PLYMOUTH 
CHURCH. — TRIBUTES FROM THE PULPIT. — CHARLES 
DICKEXS'S LAST WORDS, AND THEIR GREAT LESSON. 333 

UNCOLLECTED PIECES. 
BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. — ( J ANUS WEATHER- 
COCK,) THE POISONER. 341 

ABOARD SHIP. 365 

A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 377 

A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 391 

MR. BARLOW. - - 400 

ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 407 

A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. - - •- - - - 416 

A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. . . - - 421 

FULL REPORT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE MUDFOG 
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERY- 
THING. 426 

FULL REPORT OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE MUDFOG 
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERY- 
THING. 450 

THACKERAY. — IN MEMORIAM. 475 



LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER I. 

lesson of his life and writings. — character of his 
genius. — ancestry. — john dickens, the government 
clerk. — his family. — remotal to london. — newspaper 
reporter. — micawber and mrs. nickleby. — charles 
Dickens's education. — truth in fiction. — Rochester 
visited by the pickwickians. — watts's hospital. — 

CLOISTERHAM. — GAD's HILL. 

The greatest writer of his age is gone, and the snclden 
blow has smitten the great heart of humanity. There is no 
part of the civilized world where the name of Charles 
Dickens is unknown, where his genial and elevating 
writings are not valued. The}' have been translated 
into many languages, and the characters which he created 
and the adventures in which he placed them have passed 
into the current literature of the world. Every reader 
mourns for him — the lowliest as well as the highest 
participate in one common sorrow. Life has been better 
and brighter for what he has done. He was the champion 
of the oppressed, he was the censor of the selfish rich. In 
a single one of his tales was matter far more serious and 
convincing than could be found in a pyramid of lengthy 
homilies, in which Christian charity was distinguished by 
its absence. Even when he amused, he taught. No vile 
tlioughts, no prurient suggestions, no foul words are to be 
found in the writings of Charles Dickens. Even when he 

2 (29) 



80 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKEKS. 

treated of crime and poverty his language was not base or low. 
The practical spirit he endeavored to inculcate was that of 
comprehensive Christianity. His personal character was 
in accordance with his teaching. Charitable, kind-hearted, 
affectionate, temperate in living, ever doing his work as if 
he felt it a pleasure rather than a labor, there was a 
daily beauty in his life, in its earnestness, in its simplicity, 
in its purity, which was an exemplar in itself. 

To him, even more appropriately than to the brilliant 
but erratic genius to whom they were addressed, might be 
applied the stanzas which spoke of one 

" Whose mind was an essence, compounded with art, 
From the finest and best of all other men's powers ; 
"Who ruled, like a wizard, the world of the heart, 
And could call up its sunshine, or bring down its showers ; — 

" Whose humor, as gay as the firefly's light, 

Play'd round every subject, and shone as it played ; — 
Whose wit, in the combat, as gentle as bright 
Ne'er carried a heart stain away on its blade ; — 

" Whose eloquence, — brightening whatever it tried, 
Whether reason or fancy, the gay or the grave, — 
Was as rapid, as deep, and as brilliant a tide, 
As ever bore freedom aloft on its wave !'* 

In ordinary cases, a biography begins with some geneo- 
logical narrative, intended to show that the person presented 
to the notice of the reader had particular ancestors. In 
England, it is considered something to boast of that the 
first-known of a man's family " came in with the Conqueror." 
In Scotland, it suffices for this founder of the line to have 
belonged, in his time, to some Celtic marauder or early Bor- 
der raider. In Ireland, it is the fashion to go back to some 
period — before the island lost her nationality, " when Malachi 
wore the collar of gold which he won from the proud inva- 
der." In our own Northern States the New Englanders 
count back some two hundred and fifty years, dating from 



ANCESTRY. 31 

the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, while the chief boast 
of the South is that their lineage, more remote, dates from 
the colonization in the time of Elizabeth. As Yv'ith families, 
so with individuals. Walter Scott was prouder of his dis- 
tant cousinship with the ducal house of Buccleugh than of 
his own great genius which cast a flood of living glory upon 
his native land. Byron never forgot, and would have all the 
world remember, that, long before Henry the Eighth forci- 
bly wrested Newstead Abbey from the monks, and bestowed 
it upon Sir John Byron — he with the long beard, — sundry 
members of the famil}^ had fought in the Holy Land, during 
the Crusades. Even Washington Irving, who was nothing 
if not an American and a republican, could not resist the 
temptation, when writing the life of George ATashing- 
ton, of showing that one of his English progenitors was 
" Washingatune," during the reign of Saxon Edgar, in the 
tenth century, a time when few could spell, and fewer write. 
It has been, in fact, an ordinary weakness, this ambition of 
showing that a distinguished personage was not wholly what, 
in our ordinary parlance, is called " self-made." The ma- 
jority of biographers exhibit it; though Thomas Moore, 
w^ho devoted some space, in his Life of Bj^ron, to the glori- 
fication of the familj^-tree, had the good sense to reject it 
for himself On one occasion, when he was the favored 
guest of the then Prince of Wales, afterwards George the 
Fourth, and was brightening the horizon of the board with 
wit and song, his Koyal host observed, ** By the way, Moore, 
your surname is the same as that of the Marquis of Drog- 
heda ? I shall ask him here, one of these daj^s, to meet you. 
Of course, you belong to his family ?" There was a moment's 
pause, and then the Poet answered, *' Our common descent 
is the same, I believe — from Adam. But I desire to in- 
form your Royal Highness, that I am not akin to the Peer- 
age. My father was son of a County Kerry farmer, and 
to this day keeps a grocer's shop in Dublin, where I was 
born and bred." The manliness and independence of this 



32 LIFE OF CHxiRLES DICKENS. 

response certainly did not injure Moore — who usually was 
somewhat of a tuft-hunter, — in the opinion of those who 
heard it. Lord Thurlow was less independent, because less 
accurate, in his reply to the gentleman from the Herald's Col- 
lege, who waited upon him, in June, 1718, when he was cre- 
ated a peer, for particulars of his descent, out of which to 
construct a family pedigree, and said, '' I suppose I may 
safely set you down as of the same blood with another JSTor- 
folk celebrity, John Thurloe, who was Secretary of State to 
the Commonwealth, under Oliver and Richard Cromwell ?" 
Thurlow, who was impetuous and rough, immediately 
blustered out, " You are wrong altogether, John Thurloe 
was an Esses man, and I am from Suffolk. He came of an 
old stock. There was one Thurlow, in my part of the count}', 
who was a common carrier, and I think as he was an honest 
man, that you had better derive my lineage from /im." 

Charles Dickens, like many other illustrious personages, 
whose names are not written in the Herald's books at Doc- 
tor's Commons, had no ancestry to boast of, went through 
life extremely well, without crest or scutcheon, and was 
content to draw his nobility direct from the Creator. His 
father, plain John Dickens, who died some time ago, full of 
years, after having seen his son's universal popularity, and 
profited by his continuous bounty, was a Government clerk, 
stationed at Portsmouth Dockyard, in Hampshire, when his 
eldest son was born. He was in the Paymaster's office, 
and, in that capacity, had to travel from place to place, to pay 
charges a.nd salaries, during the great war which closed 
at Waterloo. Sometimes he went as far to the southwest 
of the English coast as Falmouth and Plj^mouth — oftener to 
Gosport, Dover, Sheerness, Chatham and Gravesend. He 
was a trusted and trustworthy person, to whom much money 
was confided, the "wooden walls" being costly in those 
days, and men-of-war's-men apt to get angry if, on landing 
at a port, after a long cruise, their arrears of wages were 
not immediately paid up. How foolishly, how recklessly 



PARENTAGE AND KIN. 33 

they lavished this money, can be judged from the naval 
romances " of the period " as written by Marryat, Chamier, 
Edward Howard, Johnson Neale, and others. 

Mr. John Dickens was married in the early part of the 
present century, and his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Dickens, has 
been described to me as having much resembled Mrs. 
Nickleby, of happy memory, in the charming inaccurac}^ of 
her memory and the curious insecutiveness of her conversa- 
tion. In later 3'ears she was tall and thin, with a wasp's 
waist, of which she was very vain, and was what is called 
"dressy." She was a good wife, ver}^ fond of her husband, 
dcA^oted to her children, and extremely proud of her son 
Charles, who was kind and liberal to her from the time it 
was in his power to be so. Her family further consisted of 
the following children ; 

1. Fanny Dickens, who was a music-teacher for some 
time before her marriage with Mr. Bennett, a lawyer. She 
Is dead. 

2. Charles Dickens, "the world's heir of fame," born at 
Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, on the tth of Februarj'', 
1812 ; died at Gad's Hill, near the old Cathedral, city of 
Rochester, in Kent, on Thursday, the 9th of June, 18T0, 
and interred in Westminster Abbey, on Tuesday, the 14th of 
June, IStO. 

3. Letitia Dickens, m-arried to Mr. Auste^, engineer and 
architect in London. She is the only surviving member of 
this household. 

4. Frederic William Dickens, who, through the influence 
of Lord John Russel, an old and warm friend of Charles 
Dickens, obtained a clerkship in the Foreign Office, London, 
but after some years, received a hint that from certain 
irregularities, his resignation would be accepted. On the 
23d of October, 1868, he died of abscess on the lungs, at 
Darlington, where he had been stationed during the prece- 
ding twelve months. He had suffered greatly during the 
last three weeks of his illness. The newspaper obituary 



34 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

which mentions this, adds : "The geniality — it was some- 
thing more to those who could see below the surface — 
of Mr. Frederic Dickens's nature, and his ready fund of 
humor and anecdote, will not readily be forgotten b}^ 
those who knew him best, and liked him best." Mr. 
Frederic Dickens may best be characterized, perhaps, as 
belonging to that numerous and careless class who enjoy 
life, on small means, without much regard for health. " No- 
body's enemy but his own," is the general conversational 
epitaph on a man of this sort. 

5. Alfred Dickens, was an architect or engineer, perhaps 
a little of both, upon the Malton Railroad, and is dead. 

6. Augustas Dickens, was brought up in the count- 
ing-house of John Chapman & Co., No. 2 Leadenhall stree\ 
London, and came to this country, some ten or twelve 3'ears 
ago. He became a clerk in the Illinois Railroad Company, 
and died in Chicago, five jears ago. His second wife (Miss 
Bertha Phillips, daughter of the late Charles Phillips, the 
celebrated Irish orator,) whom he brought here and married, 
died on Christmas eve, 1868, at Chicago, leaving three 
beautiful children. She was alive when Charles Dickens 
last was in America, but, as none of the family had recog- 
nized her, and he thought it not impossible that she might 
be intruded upon him, being known to be his sister-in-law, 
he did not visit Chicao-o. It is stated that, on hearino^ of 
her distressed circumstances, he sent her a handsome 
pecuniary present. Augustus was the original " Boses." 

Charles Dickens m^a}^ be considered less a townsman than 
a towns-baby of Landport, near Portsmouth. When he 
was only twelve months old, his father removed from 
Portsmouth Dockyard to Somerset House, London, where 
he was intrusted with some very important duties, that do 
not appear to have suited his taste any better than they 
did his peculiar abilities, for Mr. John Dickens was unde- 
niably a man of talent and energy, gifted with a lively and 
convivial spirit that made him, wherever he went, " a hail 



YOUTH AT CHATHAM. 35 

fellow well met," and a man so generally liked that liis com- 
pany was much sought after, which his personal friends hint 
led him to "launch out," like many other kindred spirits, a 
little more than his means would permit, and as a natural 
consequence, he was not altogether free from those peculiar 
anxities and troubles that follow such indulgences. Somer- 
set House, then, was not a congenial place for Mr. Dickens, 
and that worth}^ gentleman, with his wife and young Charles, 
one fine morning embarked in one of the hoj^s then plj^ing 
between London and Chatham, taking his household effects 
with him, and after a day or so settled down as an official 
in Chatham Dockyard, selecting as his place of abode a 
plain-looking house, with a whitewashed plaster front, and 
a small garden, front and behind, in St. Mary's place, or the 
Brook, which belonged to a Mr. Smart, and was next to an 
original and humble-looking building, also of plastered ex- 
terior, long known as the Providence Chapel, belonging to 
a sect of Baptists, where Charles's schoolmaster, the Rev. Mr. 
Giles, officiated as pastor. Charles, like most children who 
have the good fortune to be first-born sons, was his mother's 
pet. Mr. Dickens, sen., here again was not permitted to 
settle down quietly, but was destined to follow a roving 
kind of commission between the dock3^ards of Chatham, 
Sheerness, and other Government places; and in course of 
time 3^oung Charles grew up to be a boy old enough to wear 
a broad white collar, blue jacket, buckled shoes, and a large 
peaked cap. 

Mr. John Dickens, the father, was superannuated in 1816, 
while yet in the prime of life, and allowed a pension, — accord- 
ing to the liberal practice in England. There was a general 
reduction of the naval and military establishments, at the 
^close of the war, and therefore Mr. Dickens was dismissed. 
He wrote an unusually good hand, round and clear, (as I 
perceive by a note of his now before me, dated thirty years 
after this period,) and, removing his household goods to Lon- 
don, succeeded in obtaining an engagement as reporter upon 



36 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the Morning Chronicle. Active in mind and body, with a 
great deal of energ}^ and a remarkable aptitude for work, 
John Dickens was a usefid journalist. He continued on the 
Chronicle, I have heard, until the Daily Neivs was es- 
tablished, in January, 1846, when Charles Dickens placed 
him and Mr. George Hogarth on the staff of that paper, 
and 1 believe he remained on it to the last. It was a con- 
stant joke, among newspaper-men, that Charles Dickens had 
drawn upon his father's actual character, when he was wri- 
ting David Copperfield, and put him into that stor}^ as 
Micawber ; but though there was a great deal of " waiting 
until something should turn up," in much that John Dickens 
did, (and did not,) a man who had kept himself in London, 
during a period of over forty years, upon the newspaper 
press, with only a single change, and that for the better, was 
considerably ahove the Micawber scale. Some traits of the 
living may have been transmitted, with the novelist's natural 
exaggeration, to \\\q fitjiitious character. A journalist, with 
wife and six ^'oung chiklren, must alwaj^s find it difficult to 
keep his head above v ater in London, where, (the price of 
bread regulating all other prices of provisions,) the four 
pounds loaf then cost twenty-five cents. It is possible that a 
man maj^ have found it rather difficult to " raise" a brood of 
six children, "my dam and all her little ones," upon four 
or five guineas a week, to say nothing of their schooling. 
Now and then, perhaps, the reporter may have had some 
"outside" chances, but it may be presumed that an avun- 
cular relation, sporting the three golden balls of Lombardy 
over his place of business, may have been resorted to when 
money was scarce. Perhaps, too, on an emergency, money 
had to be raised by " a little bill." The Micawber mode of 
financiering, as developed in David Copperfield, a tale which 
avowedly gives many of its author's own experiences, may 
have been drawn less from imagination than memory, and 
it may be noticed that while Micawber does and says many 
unwise things, he never goes into anything which he con- 



THE SCHOOLBOY. 3t 

sitlered dishonest or dishonorable. For ni}^ own part, I see 
no reason why John Dickens should not have been the original 
of Wilkins Micawber. He considered himself rather com- 
plimented in thus being converted into literary " capital" by 
his son. 

How and where the Dickens children were educated, on 
the father's small salary, is to me unknown. We have to 
look after the eldest son only. Charles's education was 
plain enough. He received it, for the most part, in a school 
at Chatham. It included some little study of the Eton 
Latin Grammar, but no Greek. Perhaps, the experiences 
of poor David Copperfield may have been those of young 
Charles Dickens. It is known that, at an early age, 
the heroes of Fielding's and Smollett's novels, of Gold- 
smith's Dr. Primrose, of Le Sage's French-Spanish Gil 
Bias, of Cervantes's immortal Knight of La Mancha, and 
De Foe's life-like Robinson Crusoe, were familiar friends of 
the lad — for he has told us that he fell into a habit of im- 
personating each of them, in turn, for periods of from a 
week to a month, and thus lived in the ideal world of 
romance. Then there were the Arabian Nights and the 
Tales of the Genii, throwing a chastened Oriental glamour 
over all, while a balance of realism, one halfpenny worth of 
bread to a vast quantity of sack, was supplied by sundry 
volumes of vo3'ages and travels. 

The miserable experiences at Salem House, with the 
cruel practices in which Mr. Creakle, its brute of a master, 
used delightedl}^ to indulge, most probably Were those of 
Dickens himself; — he could scarcely have invented them. 
The bo3^, notwithstanding, picked up a plain education, with 
as much Latin grammar as enabled him, by and by, to 
write English with propriety, and prepared him, after he 
had attained manhood and celebrity, to master the French 
language, so as to translate it with ease, and finallj^to speak 
it with fluency and a good accent. In his European tour, 
and by subsequent study, he picked up some knowledge of 
Italian. 



38 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKERS. 

Charles Dickens was intimately acquainted, from his 
boyish days, with that part of Kent, containing the 
ancient episcopal cit3^ of Rochester, situated on the river 
Medway, which surrounds the naval yard and harbor of 
Chatham. In the preface to Nicholas Nickhhy, this 
sentence is to be found : ** I cannot call to mind, now, how I 
came to hear of Yorkshire schools, when I was not a very 
robust child, sitting in bj'-places, near Rochester Castle, 
with a head full of Partridge, Strap, Tom Pipes, and 
Sancho Panza." 

This neighborhood, early and late, bad a great influence 
on Dickens. In 1836, when he began The Fickioick Papers, 
(the date of the story being 182t, a pre-railroad period,) he 
makes the hero start from the Golden Cross, Charing Cross,, 
then a great coaching centre, with the resolution of making 
Kochester his first halting-place. Wlien the party, accompa- 
nied by Jingle, reach Rochester Bridge, (erected in the time 
of King John, six hundred and fifty years ago,) the magnifi- 
cent ruin of Rochester Castle, built by Bishop Gundulph, 
and the splendid Cathedral, still well preserved, and erected 
by Bishop Odo, brother of William the Conqueror, are sig- 
nally praised. Moreover the party are made to pull up at 
the Bull Inn, in the High street, next door to Wright's, 
which Jingle describes as "dear — very dear — half a crown 
in the bill if you look at the waiter, — charge you more if you 
dine at a friend's than they would if you dined in the coffee- 
room — rum fellows — very." None but one very well 
acquainted with the locality could have grouped together 
the four towns, Stroud, Rochester, Chatham, and Bromp- 
ton, which are thus described ; 

The principal productions of these towns, (says Mr. Pick- 
wick,) appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, 
officers, and dock-yard men. The commodities chiefly ex- 
posed for sale in the public streets, are marine stores, hard- 
bake, apples, flat-fish and o^^sters. The streets present a 
lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefl}^ hy the 



OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER. 39 

conviviality of the military. It is truly delightful to a 
pliilantbropic mind, to see these gallant men, staggering 
along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal 
and ardent spirits ; more especially when we remember 
that the following them about, and jesting with them, 
affords a cheap and innocent amusement for the boy 
population. Kothing (adds Mr. Pickwick) can exceed 
their good humor. It was but the day before my arrival, 
that one of them had been most grossly insulted in 
the house of a publican. The bar-maid had positively 
refused to draw him any more liquor ; in return for 
which, he had (merely in plaj^fulness) drawn his baj^onet, 
and wounded the girl in the shoulder. And yet this fine 
fellow was the ver}^ tirst to go down to the house next morn- 
ing, and express his readiness to overlook the matter, and 
forget what had occurred ! The consumption of tobacco in 
these towns (continued Mr. Pickwick) must be ver}'- great : 
and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceed- 
ingly delicious to those who are extremel}^ fond of smoking. 
A superficial traveller might object to the dirt which is their 
leading characteristic ; but to those who view it as an in- 
dication of traffic and commercial prosperity, it is truly 
gratifying. 

No one, except he were to the manor born, could have 
described that place so sententiously. It was upon the 
Lines of Rochester that the grand military review took 
place, at which Pickwick, Winkle and Snodgrass ." came to 
grief," but finally fell into good luck by becoming acquainted 
with Mr. Wardle, an' improbable gentleman farmer of the 
Weald of Kent. 

Dickens did not often describe sceneiy, but here, opening 
the fifth chapter of Pickwick, is a charming sketch of this 
favorite locality : 

Bright and pleasant was the ^\iy, balm}^ the air, and beau- 
tiful the appearance of every object around, as Mr. Pickwick 
leaned over the balustrades of Rochester Bridge, contempla- 
ting nature, and waiting for breakfast. The scene was indeed 
one, which might well have charmed a far less reflective 
mind, than that to which it was presented. 

On the left of the spectator lay the ruined wall, broken in 



40 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKEKS. 

many places, and in some; overhanging the narrow beach 
below in rude and heavy masses. Huge knots of sea-weed 
hung upon the jagged and pointed stones, trembling in 
every breath of wind ; and the green ivy clung mournfully 
round the dark and ruined battlements. Behind it rose the 
ancient castle, its towers roofless, and its massive walls 
crumbling away, but telling us proudly of its old might and 
strength, as when, seven hundred years ago, it rang with the 
clash of arms, or resounded with the noise of feasting and 
revehy. On either side, the banks of the Medway, covered 
with corn-fields and pastures, with here and there a wind- 
mill, or a distant church stretched aw^a3^ as far as the eye 
could see, presenting a rich and varied landscape, rendered 
more beautiful by the changing shadows which passed 
swiftly across it, as the thin and half-formed clouds skimmed 
awa}^ in the light of the morning sun. The river, reflecting 
the clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as it flowed 
noiselessly on ; and the oars of the fishermen dipped into 
the water with a clear and liquid sound, as the heavy but 
picturesque boats glided slowly down the stream. 

This is, literallj^, a beautiful picture in w^ords — a pen and 
ink view. 

Many 3'ears after Pickwick was written, its author again 
went back to Rochester, remembering that, ever since the 
year 15T9, Watts's Hospital, for the nightly entertainment 
of Six Poor Travellers, had been a noted institution, and 
telling how the e&^gy of worthy Master Kichard Watts 
was to be seen in the Cathedral, and how he had restricted 
his charity (lodging and entertainment gratis for one 
night, with fourpence each) for the Six, as aforesaid ; they 
"not being Rogues, or Proctors." He says : 

I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable 
air, with the quaint old door already three times mentioned 
(an arched door), choice little long low lattice-windows, and 
a roof of three gables. The silent High Street of Rochester 
is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into 
strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock 
that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick 
building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out 
his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in 



THE VERY QUEER SMALL COY. 41 

Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons, 
and the Normans ; and down to the times of King John, 
when the rugged castle — I will not undertake to say how 
many hundreds of years old then — was abandoned to the 
centuries of weather wiiich have so defaced the dark aper- 
tures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and 
daws had picked its eyes out. 

What was done and said at Watts's, is it not to be read 
in that Christmas story by Dickens entitled " The Seven 
Poor Travellers," and doth it not show, if evidence were 
needed, what a place Rochester had in his memory ? The 
Uncommercial Traueller mentions it again and again. 

Yet more. In The Mystery of Edwin Drood — that story 
be_o:un in so much hope and after a great deal of thought, 
which must remain a fragment, remiuding us of 

"him who left ■untold 
The story of Cambuscau bold," 

— Rochester was again brought up. Its resemblance to 
Cloisterham Cathedral, is obvious from the first. In its an- 
tiquity, even the likeness prevails, for, next to Canterbur}^, 
the see of Rochester is the oldest in England ; — and the 
Cathedral was built in the year of grace 604. Thus in early 
manhood, in his prime, and in the sere and yellow leaf, 
Dickens wrote about the old place, which had been familiar 
to him in his boyhood. When he was able to purchase a 
homestead, the old house at Gadshill, near Rochester 
and Chatham, became his. In one of his Uncommercial 
sketches, he " noticed by the wayside a very queer small 
boy." Here is what follows : 

"Halloa I" said I, to the very queer small boy, *' where do 
you live ?" 

" At Chatham," says he. 

" What do 3^ou do there ?" says I. 

"I goto school," saj^s he. 

I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently 
the \'evj queer small boy said, " This is Gadshill we are 



42 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKEITS. 

coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travelers, 
and ran away." 

" You know something about Falstaff, eh?" said L 

"All about him," said the very queer small boy. "I 
Jim old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do 
let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house 
there, if you please !" 

" You admire that house ?" said L 

''Bless you, sir," said the very queer small boy, "when 
I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a 
treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now, I 
am nine, I come by mj'self to look at it. And ever since I 
can recollect, my father seeing me so fond of it, has often 
said to me, ' If you were to be very persevering and were to 
work hard, you might some day come to live in it.^ Though 
that's impossible !" said the very queer small bo}", drawing a 
low breath, and now staring at the house out of the window 
with all his might. 

I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer 
small bo}^ ; for that house happens to be my house, and I 
have reason to believe that what he said was true. 

It was even so. In the very queer small boy, nine years 
old, who read all sorts of books, admired Gadshill, knew its 
Shakespearian association, and was paternally told that if 
he worked hard, he might live in such a house, we find re- 
alized the famous Wordsworthian aphorism, " The Child is 
father of the Man," the idea of which, by the way, is to be 
found iu two lines, 

"The childhood shows the man 
As moruiug shews the day," 

which were written in Paradise Regained, by an almost 
inspired blind old man, named John Milton, who is more 
talked about than read, in our days. 

He repeatedly declared his desire to be buried without 
pomp, in the burial ground of St. Nicholas Parish near the 
Cathedral — marked 3 on the diagram on next page. Thirty 
years ago, when, in company with a friend, to whom I 
am indebted for much personal information about him, he 



INTENDED PLACE OF REST. 



43 



was looking clown, from the top of Rochester Castle, upon 
the quiet burial-ground, he said " There, my boy, I mean to 
go into dust and ashes." 

Here, from memory, is a sketch of that part of Rochester. 
He desired to rest beneath the grand old castle, which stands 
"a noble wreck in ruinous perfection," with the Medway flow- 
ing between grassy banks, within a hundred feet of its base. 
There is scarcely any spot in England more beautifully 
picturesque, and the last thirteen years of Charles Dickens's 
life was passed within four miles of this familiar and beauti- 
ful old city : — 



River Medway. 



r^ 



River Medway. 



1. Rochester Bridge. 

2. The Castle. 

3. St. Nicholas Church Yard. 

4. The Cathedral. 

5. Wright's Hotel. 

"Wright's Hotel, of which Mr. Jingle spoke in such dis- 
paraging terms, and where the Pickwickians did not stop, 
was the scene of the Ball in which the rencontre between 
Jingle and Dr. Slammer of the 9Tth took i^lace, though the 
consequent duel did not. 



44 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER XL 

ENGLISH LAWYERS. — ARTICLED CLERKS. — SHORT-HAND WRI- 
TING. — DICKENS AS A REPORTER. — MIRROR OF PARLIAMENT. 

— TRUE SUN. — MORNING CHRONICLE. — FIRST AUTHORSHIP. 

WRITING THE " SKETCHES." — JOHN BLACK, OUR OLD-TIME 
EDITOR. — RECOLLECTIONS BY N. P. WILLIS. — PUBLISHER. 

It has been stated that " Charles Dickens began life as a 
lawyer, got tired of the dull routine, and turned to litera- 
ture." This is erroneous, for he never had even a chance of 
becoming a lawj^er, — either in the higher grade of outer 
barrister, or " counsel learned in the law," or in the lower, 
but often more lucrative, class of attorney. In England, 
before a young man can enter his name as " student," atone 
of the Inns of Court, to enable him to be " called" to the 
bar, after a lapse of three j^ears, it is necessary for him 
to deposit about one hundred pounds, with the treasurer of 
the Inn of Court, as a sort of guarantee for his respecta- 
bility, which sum is returnable when "called," though it 
has to be paid out again for the stamp-duty upon the certiii- 
cate of his admission to the bar. In the case of an attornej^, 
a properly qualified person could be admitted to practice, 
after a prescribed examination, as to his knowledge of the 
principle and practice of the law, provided he had been an 
apprentice, or "articled clerk," to some practising attorney 
for five 3^ears. But, upon the "articles" or indenture of 
apprenticeship, be the premium high or low, it was necessary 
to pay a stamp-duty of one hundred and twenty pounds. 
There could be no " articles" unless the documents were 
stamped, at the beginning of the five 3^ears, at the said cost 
of £120. It is writ, in literary historj^ that Mr. Disraeli 
commenced as an attorney', like Dickens and Ainsworth. The 



IN A LAW OFFICE. 45 

latter really was admitted as an attorney, after having been 
a five years' articled clerk, but did not practice. Mr. Dis- 
raeli was a not articled clerk, but was in an attorney's office, 
for a few months and then took to literature. 

Thriftless John Dickens, with a small salary, and a large 
family, had not the means of placing his eldest son, Charles, 
as an " articled clerk" in an attorney's office. The boy was 
taken from school, at the age of sixteen and put, as writing 
clerk, into the office of an attorne3% in Southampton Build- 
ings, Bedford Row, London, — like one of the j^oung gentle- 
men who " chaffed" Mr. Pickwick on the memorable occasion 
when he paid a visit, without being sent for, to Messrs. 
Dodson & Fogg. The articled clerk looks to being in 
business, on his own account, as soon as he has served his 
five years, but the writing clerk can have no such hope. 
He has to do all the rough work in the office, as well as out 
of doors, is perpetually copying documents when not run- 
ning about, in the courts and out of them, and, commencing 
upon a salary of aboirt five dollars a week, may consider 
himself fortunate if he has thrice that amount, at the close 
of twenty or thirty years' service. Yery frequently, in this 
poverty and the recklessness which it has a facile tendency 
to engender, the clerk declines into a careless ne'er-do-well, 
like Dick Swiveller, or an out-at-elbov/s hack, like Weevle, 
in Bleak House. Here the distinction lies. The '' young 
man of the name of Guppy," clerk in the office of Kenge 
and Carboy, attorne3^s for Mr. Jarndyce, comes out of his 
articles, (to use his own words,) at the end of five years, passes 
his examination, gets his certificate, is admitted on the roll 
of attorneys, and opens his office in Walcot Square, Lam- 
beth ; but his friend, and senior, Weevle, alias Jopling, who 
has not been articled, remains a mere clerk — his clerk, in 
fact, and never can rise above that dead level. The Eng- 
lish system differs so much from our own that, for the bene- 
fit of possible legal readers, I have thus explained it. 

After a sufficiently long trial of this sort of life, in tlie 

3 



4G LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

course of which he probably had occasion to visit police- 
offices, courts of law, judges' chambers, and the taxing- 
master's room ; to serve subpcsnas and copies of writs ; to 
look after bail and execution ; to hunt out witnesses's facts ; 
to copy folio after folio of the lengthy documents facetiously 
called briefs, Charles Dickens picked up, not a knowledge 
of the law, for he has made some legal mistakes in his 
stories, but a familiar acquaintance with the routine prac- 
tice in an attorne3'''s office, and after a sufficiently long trial, 
bade farewell to that hopeless ever-go-round, and resolved 
to set up for himself. His reliance was on the newspaper 
press, and, like his own David Copperfield, he had labored 
hard and successfully to obtain facility as a short-hand writer. 
He was nearly twenty when he got employment upon a pub- 
lication called The 3Iirror of Parliament, conducted by 
Mr. Barrow, a barrister, and established as a rival to Han- 
sard^s Parliamentary Debates. In England there is no offi- 
cial reporting of the proceedings in Parliament, but each 
London morning paper has a full staff of private reporters. 
Their reports are made, submitted for correction to the gen- 
tlemen who have taken part in the proceedings, and then re- 
printed in a separate publication, in convenient book-form. 
At present and for many years past, Hansard's has been the 
only work of this character, and is generally referred to as 
authorit3\ On Barrow's rival publication, throughout the 
great Reform debates of 1832, Charles Dickens not onl}^ at- 
tended the debates, but also acted as a sort of sub-editor of 
the work. It was a great object to get it before the public 
in advance of its rival, and by means of the good system the 
new hand established, this was usually done. 

The connection thus established made him well known at 
many editorial rooms, and soon procured him an engage- 
ment as reporter upon the True Sun, a London evening 
paper, then lately established. There had been a misunder- 
standing between Mr. Grant, chief proprietor, and Mr. Mnrdo 
Young, sole editor of Tlie Sun, which ended in the latter 



NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 4Y 

gentleman obtaining legal possession of the paper, which 
he had forced into great notoriety, at vast expense, by 
making it the vehicle for special and late parliamentary 
reports. This was before Railwayism had spread ail over 
the country, before the electric telegraph had annihilated 
time and space. The mails for all parts of England then 
left the General Post Office about half-past seven o'clock each 
evening and received no newspapers after six. Except by 
rare efforts, the second editions of the evening papers gave 
no news after 6 p. m. In 1826, when Mr. Canning explained 
how he had sent an army and fleet to Lisbon, to prevent the 
invasion of Portugal; in 1829, when Catholic Emancipation 
was debated and conceded; in 1831-32, during. the debates 
on the Reform Bill, and on other important occasions. The 
Sun, sending rela3^s of its own stenographers into the Lords 
and Commons, gave long reports of these discussions, 
sometimes not ending until morning — and expressed large 
numbers of these late editions to all parts of the country, 
by means of post-chaises and four, at enormous cost, but 
with commensurate increase of prestige and circulation, be- 
cause the morning papers were thus anticipated. The Ti^ue 
Sun, established in rivalry, had also to make great exer- 
tions. Mr. Dickens was soon found to be one of the most 
rapid, ready, and reliable of its reporters. As the great 
pressure on these gentlemen was far from frequent — say, 
twice or thrice in each session, their actual labor averaged 
only a few hours each evening. There was abundance of 
leisure, if not very magnificent remuneration, for these after- 
noon reporters. Among those who made profitable use of 
it was Charles Dickens, who then wrote several of his 
Sketches, and visited the nooks and corners of London, 
taking observations. 

In the parliamentary session of 1835, Mr. Dickens was 
engaged as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle, in the 
House of Commons, and immediately took rank in the van, 
for the accuracy and neatness of his reports, and the rapidity 



48 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

with which he transcribed his notes. At one of the dinners 
of the Press Fund, in London, where he occupied the chair, 
he told his audience that the habits of his early life as a re- 
porter so clung to him, that he seldom listened to a clever 
speech without his fingers mechanically and unconsciousl}^ 
going through the process of reporting it. ^^ 

All that is now remembered of him in "the Gallery," is 
that he was reserved, but not shy, and that he took unusual 
pains with his work. Some time before this, he rented what 
are called " chambers," in Furnival's Inn, Holborn Bars, — 
one of the two Inns of Chancery attached to Lincoln's Inn, 
and mentioned not only in Pickwick, but also in the fourth 
part of Edwin Drood, 

Mr. James Grant, author of "Random Recollections of 
the Houses of Lords and Commons," and of numerous other 
matter-of-fact works which were very sharply ridiculed by 
Thackeray in Fraser^s Magazine, has given the following de- 
tailed account of Mr. Dickens's entrance into authorship : 

It was about the year 1833-34, before Mr. Dickens's con- 
nection with the Morning Chronicle, and before Mr. Black, 
the editor of that journal, had ever met with him, that he 
commenced his literary career as an amateur writer. He 
made his debut in the latter end of 1834 or beginning of 1835, 
in the Old Monthly Magazine, then conducted by Captain 
Holland, a friend of mine. He sent, in the first instance, 
his contributions to that periodical anonymously. These 
consisted of sketches, chiefly of a humorous character, and 
were simply signed " Boz." For a long time they did not 
attract any special attention, but were generally spoken of in 
newspaper notices of the magazine as "clever," "graphic," 
etc. Early in 1836 the editorship of the Monthly Magazine — 
the adjective " Old " having been by this time dropped — • 
came into my hands ; and in making the necessary arrange- 
ments for its transfer from Captain Holland — then, 1 should 
have mentioned, proprietor as well as editor — I expressed 
my great admiration of the series of "Sketches by Boz," 
which had appeared in the Monthly, and said I should like 
to make an arrangement with the writer for the continuance 
of them under my editorship. With that view I asked him 



FIRST AUTHORSHIP. 49 

the name of the author. It will sound strange in most ears, 
■when I state that a name which has for so many 3^ears filled 
the w^iole civilized world with its fame, was not remembered 
by Captain Holland. But, he added, after expressing his 
regret that he could not at the moment recollect the real 
name of " Boz," that he had received a letter from him a 
few da^'S previously, and that if I would meet him, at the 
same time and place next day, he would bring me that letter, 
because it related to the " Sketches " of the waiter, in the 
Monthly Ilagazine. As Captain Holland knew I was at the 
time a Parliamentary reporter on the 3Io)ming Chronicle, 
then a journal of high literary reputation, and of great 
political influence — he supplemented his remarks by saj-ing 
that "Boz " was a Parliamentar}^ reporter; on which I ob- 
served that I must, in that case, know him, at least by sight, 
as I was acquainted in that respect, more or less, with all 
the reporters in the gallery of the House of Commons. Cap- 
tain Holland and I met, according to appointment, on the 
following day, when he brought the letter to which he had 
referred. I then found that the name of the author of 
" Sketches by Boz," was Charles Dickens. The letter was 
written in the most modest terms. It was simply to the 
eflfect that as he (Mr. Dickens) had hitherto given all his 
contributions — those signed " Boz " — gratuitously, he would 
be glad if Captain Holland thought his " Sketches " worthy 
of anj^ small remuneration, as otherwise he would be obliged 
to discontinue them, because he was going very soon to get 
married, and therefore would be subjected to more expenses 
than he w^as while living alone, which he was during the 
time, in Furnival's Inn. 

A writer in the Liverpool Albion (England) says for him- 
self, ''it may not be an inadmissible souvenir of the all- 
mourned idol to state here, that the first lines ever Mr. 
Dickens composed were submitted unconditionally to the 
writer of these remarks, submitted as the merest matter of 
professional literar}^ business, hap-hazard, without any intro- 
duction or intervention of any kind, and without critic or 
author having the faintest idea of each other's individuality. 
It is, perhaps, not a too extravagant h3^pothesis to surmise 
that, had the judgment been adverse, there might never have 
been another appeal elsewhere by the hand which has held 



50 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the whole reading world in captive admiration to its multi- 
tudinous spells ever since — a period of some thirty-five 
3'ears." 

He confirms Mr. Grant's statement, with additions, thus : 

At that time the Old Monthly, as it was called, to distin- 
guish it from the New, about which latter, Colburn, with 
Campbell for editor, kept blowing such trumpets, was still a 
puissance, though it had lately parted with its principal 
contributor, Rev. Dr. Croly, whose Salathiel was yet in the 
flow of its original success ; and his " Notes of the Month " 
were always a piquant feature, even in an age of trenchant 
and polished penmanship. Under Croly the magazine was 
ardentl3^ tory ; but it had become the property of Captain 
Holland, formerly one of Bolivar's aides-de-camp — a high 
bred man of a type now passed awa}^ most variedly accom- 
plished, and the centre of a congenial circle as gifted as 
himself, including many who afterwards made the fame of 
Fraser. Holland's Hispailolan liberalism, stimulated by the 
hot and turbid English reform agitation, still seething, and 
the Campbell and Colburn competition, led him to look for 
fresh blood to revive the drooping circulation. Hence one 
reason why Dickens, then buoyantly radical, was drawn 
thitherwards, although there was nothing whatever political 
in the slight initial paper, of less than half a dozen pages, 
he ventured upon. Nor was there in the three or four similar 
ones he afterwards furnished, and which attracted only the 
most cursory notice from his fellow-contributors. These 
articles sufficed, however, to induce Dr. Black, an old friend 
of his father's, to recommend the acceptance of others like 
them, but of a mere " social " character, in the after manner 
of the master, for BeWs Life — the proprietor of which was 
lavishing large means, in every form of publicity, upon his 
three journals, morning, evening, and weekly. Then the suc- 
cess of "her Majesty's Van" (Peel's newly-devised hearse- 
like vehicle for conveying prisoners to and from the police 
courts), and a few more of the like category, though printed 
in the smallest and densest newspaper type, some two-thirds 
of a column in length, obtained in all journals the extensive 
quotation which led to the Chapman and Hall alliance that 
resulted in " Pickwick," and in the unexampled celebrity 
thereupon supervening, and sustained crescendo to the last. 
Unique in all things, Dickens was pre-eminently singular in 



JOHN BLACK. 51 

lliis, that, though " a gentleman of the press " to a degree 
undreamed of in the vocabulary of the right honorable per- 
sonage who affectedly disavows any other escutcheon, he 
bad no assailants, no traducers, no enemies. And for this 
reason, that, without being in the least mawkish, tuft hunt- 
ing, or mealy-mouthed — on the contrary, being the most 
out-spoken extirpator of shams, imposture, and, in his own 
all-exhaustive phrase, of " Pecksniffism," he nevertheless tra- 
duced, maligned, satirized nobod3^ Not even his censors. 
For he had many such. It would be like descending into 
the catacombs of criticism, so to speak, to unearth proofs 
of how leading journals, now blatant in his posthumous 
praise, once ridiculed his pretensions to delineate anything 
beyond the Marionettes at a peep-show ; what jubilant clap- 
ping of hands there was over Jupiter's pseudo-classic joke, 
Procumhit humi Boz, in reference to his first and last dra- 
matic fiasco, " The Tillage Coquettes," under Braham's 
management, at the St. James, a quarter of a century back; 
and what a titter of sardonic approval was evoked by the 
Superfine Reviewer's pedantic scoff, that Mr. Dickens's read- 
ings appeared to be confined to a perusal of his own writings. 
His first steps were beset with Rigbys, whose "slashing 
articles " cried out, '* This will never do !" pointing out how 
thorough a cockney he was, once his foot was off the flag- 
wa3's of the bills of mortality, and anticipating the late 
vixenish verdict of a certain screaming sister of the sensa- 
tional school, that his works are stories of pothouse pleas- 
antries. He won his w^ay into universal favor in virtue of 
an ill-assimilative genialitj^ against which no predetermina- 
tion of resistance was proof, as in the case of S3'dney Smith, 
who, with characteristic candor, avowed his intolerance of 
what he believed to be the cant of Dickens's popularity, and 
promptly ended in becoming an enthusiastic apostle of the 
propaganda himself. 

"When Dickens was engaged on the Morning Chronicle, Mr. 
John Black, biographer of Torquato Tasso, and translator of 
the lectures of William Augustus and Frederick Schlegel, 
was its editor. Of great learning and remarkable memory, 
with very liberal political opinions, this gentleman had been 
in charge of the Chronicle long before the death of Mr. James 
Perry, who, if he did not found, established that paper as 
the mouthpiece of the Whigs, after he became its proprie- 



52 LIFE OF CHAFtLES DICKENS. 

tor and editor. It was Mr. Perry who initiated the 
employment of relays of reporters — the effect of which has 
been to make the closing part of a report, however extended, 
as full and vigorous as the commencement. Mr. Black was 
an editor, sui generis. A ten-line " leader " would have 
appalled him, by its brevity, for he resembled some of the 
Old World soldiers, in his predilection for charging in long 
"columns." He never could understand why Mr. Perry 
paid Thomas Moore very liberally for the satirical squibs 
which were finally collected under the title of " The Two- 
penny Post-bag," always contending that Poetry could say 
nothing which might not be much better expressed in Prose I 
His plan in writing a leading article, was to meditate upon 
it from morning until night, and then write two or three 
heav}^ sticksful, closing with a quotation, at least a col- 
umn in length, from Bayle, Pascal, Thomas Aquinas, Dun 
Scotus, or some other light writer. It has always puzzled 
me to know why, not having the slightest sense of humor, he 
admitted Dickens's Sketches into the Chi^onicle. It is true, 
they were only published in a tri-weekly afternoon issue for 
the country. 

Mr. Gruneison, long connected with the London press, 
confirms the statement that some of the Sketches appeared 
in BelPs Life in London, the great sporting paper, which 
had a large circulation, and paid contributors liberally. It 
was then conducted by a very able man, Mr. Vincent Dowl- 
ing, known in the profession, from his great height, by the 
sobriquet of " The Long Scribe." 

To this period (1835), when he maj^ be said to have been 
" in a transition state," belongs a reminiscence of Charles 
Dickens, from the pen of N. P. Willis. Filtering out of it a 
certain assumption of superiority, on the part of the " Pen- 
cillings by the Way " author, it may give some idea of what 
a professed and professional man of societ}' felt on meeting- 
such a gem as Dickens and not seeing the sparkle. 

Mr. Willis's letter, written from London to the National 
Litelligencer at Washington, reads thus : 



N. P. WILLIS ON DICKENS. 53 

I was following a favorite amusement of mine one day in 
the Strand, London — strolling toward the more crowded 
thoroughfares, with cloak and umbrella, and looking at peo- 
ple and shop windows. I heard my name called out by a 
passenger in a street cab. From out the smoke of the 
wet straw peered the head of my publisher, Mr. Macroue, 
(a most liberal and noble-hearted fellow, since dead). After 
a little catechism as to my damp destiny for that morning, 
he informed me that he was going to visit Newgate, and 
asked me to join him. I willingly agreed, never having 
seen this famous prison, and after I was seated in the cab 
he said he was to pick np on the way a young paragrapliist 
for the Morning Chronicle, who wislied to write a descrip- 
tion of it. In the most crowded part of Holborn, within a 
door or two of the Bull and Mouth Inn (the great starting 
and stopping-place of the stage-coaches), we pulled up at 
the entrance of a large building used for law3^ers' chambers. 
Not to leave me sitting in the rain, Macrone asked me to 
dismount with him. I followed by a long flight of stairs to 
an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and 
bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs 
and a few books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens for the con- 
tents. I was only struck at first with one thing (and I 
made a memorandum of it that evening, as the strongest 
instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to employers), 
the degree to which the poor author was overpowered with 
the honor of his publisher's visit ! I remember saying to 
myself, as I sat down on a rickett}^ chair, '' My good fellow, 
if you were in America with that fine face and 3^our ready 
quill, you would have no need to be condescended to by a 
publisher." Dickens was dressed very much as he has 
since described Dick Swiveller — minus the swell look. 
His hair was cropped close to his head, his clothes scant, 
though jauntily cut, and after changing a ragged office coat 
for a shabby blue, he stood by the door, collarless and but- 
toned up, the very personification, I thought, of a close 
sailor to the wind. We went down and crowded into the 
cab (one passenger more than the law allowed, and Dickens 
partly in my lap and partl}^ in Macrone's), and drove on to 
Newgate. In his works, if you remember, there is a descrip- 
tion of the prison, drawn from this day's observation. AVe 
were there an hour or two, and were shown some of the 
celebrated murderers confined for life, and one young soldier 
waiting for execution ; and in one of the passages we chanced 



54 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

to meet Mrs. Fry on her usual errand of benevolence. 
Thouo-h interested in Dickens's face, I forgot him, naturally 
enough, after we entered the prison, and I do not think 
I heard him speak during the two hours.. I parted from him 
at the door of the prison, and continued my stroll into the 
city. Not long after this, Macrone sent me the sheets of 
'' Sketches by Boz," with a note saying that they were by 
the gentleman who went with us to Newgate. I read the 
book with amazement at the genius displayed in it, and in 
my note of ve\^\y assured Macrone that I thought his for- 
tune was made as a publisher, if he could monopolize the 
author. 

Two or three years afterwards I was in London, and was 
present at the complimentary dinner given to Macready. 
Samuel Lover, who sat next me, pointed out Dickens. I 
looked up and down the table, but was wholly unable to 
single him out without getting my friend to number the 
people w^ho sat above him. He was no more like the same 
man I had seen than a tree in June is like the same tree in 
February. He sat leaning his head on his hand while 
Bulwer was speaking, and with his very long hair, his very 
flash waistcoat, his chains and rings, and with all a much 
paler face than of old, he was totally unrecognizable. The 
comparison was Yery interesting to me, and I looked at him 
a long time. He was then in his culmination of popularity, 
and seemed jaded to stupefaction. Remembering the 
glorious w^ork he had written since I had seen him, I longed 
to pay him my homage, but had no opportunity^ and I did 
not see him again till he came over to reap his harvest, and 
upset his hay-cart in America. When all the ephemera of 
his imprudences and improvidences shall have passed away 
— say twenty years hence — I should like to see him #igain, 
renowned as he will be for the most original and remarkable 
works of his time. 

Kemembering what manner of man Mr. N". P. Willis 
was, fashioning himself on the model of Count D'Osray, that 
mere tailor's block for the exhibition of unpaid-for garments, 
the above description is to be taken, like his own notes of 
hand, at a considerable discount. The idea of taking, or 
mistaking Charles Dickens then, with a good engagement, 
for " a young paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle,^' and 



THE NAME OF "BOZ." 55 

of fancying that he resembled Dick Swiveller, '' miyius the 
swell look" in his appearance, is too heavy a draught upon 
human credulity. It is onl}^ surprising, when he mentioned 
the *' hair cropped close to his head," that this self-appointed 
" arbiter elegantiarum " did not suggest that probably it 
had not grown since Dickens had last taken his month's 
exercise upon the treadmill at the House of Correction in 
Brixton ! Yet the writer of such stuff would have been 
terribly offended if an}^ one had told him it was impertinent 
and ungentlemanly, with a probable seasoning of spite and 
falsehood. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ORIGIN or THE NAME OF " BOZ." — VARIETY OF THE 

"SKETCHES." EPIGRAM. THE DEMOSTHENES OF THE TAP. 

— OLD BAILEY CHARACTERS. — FAGIN AND THE ARTFUL 
DODGER SHADOWED FORTH. — BUMBLE AND MRS. GAMP. — 
CRUIKSHANK'S ILLUSTRATIONS. — THE COUNTESS AND THE 
PUBLISHER. 

When Mr. Macrone published two volumes of Sketches 
by "Boz," with illustrations by George Cruikshank, it was 
known only to a few newspaper folks that a young man 
named Charles Dickens, w^as the author. As we have seen, 
he had put " Boz," as his nom de plume, to sundry magazine 
and newspaper stories and sketches. In one of his later 
prefaces to Pickwick, he explained the origin of this 
pseudonym, saying it "was the nickname of a pet child, a 
younger brother, whom I had dubbed Moses, in honor of the 
Yicar of Wakefield ; which being facetiously pronounced 
through the nose, became Boses, and being shortened, be- 
came Boz. * * Boz was a very familiar household word to 
me, long before I w^as an author, and so I came to adopt it." 

Not having received this derivation at first, the human 



56 LIFE OF CHAPtLES DICKENS. 

h'ace fell into the interminable mistake of mispronouncing 
the sohyHquet. Every one sounds it like the first syllable of 
the word pos-itive ; whereas, according to its author's own 
version, it ought to be pronounced Boze. — Having thus dis- 
posed of this important philological episode, I return to 
the narrative. 

The Sketches contain the earliest productions of their 
author, "written," as he has stated, "from time to time 
to meet the exigencies of a newspaper or a magazine. They 
were originally published in two series : the first in two 
volumes, and the second one in one ;" this was in 1836. 
Fourteen 3^ears later, when he supervised a collective edition 
of his writings, Mr. Dickens prefaced them with the state- 
ment : 

The whole of these Sketches were written and published, 
one by one, when I was a very young man. They were col- 
lected and re-published while I was still a very young man ; 
and sent into the world with all their imperfections (a good 
many) on their heads. They comprise my first attempts at 
authorship — with the exception of certain tragedies achieved 
at the mature age of eight or ten, and represented with 
great applause to overflowing nurseries. I am conscious of 
their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and 
bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience ; particu- 
larl}^ in that section of the present volume which is com- 
prised under the general head of Tales. But as this collection 
is not originated now, and was very leniently and favorably 
received when it was first made, I have not felt it right 
either to remodel or expunge, beyond a few words and 
phrases here and there. 

The collection contains Sketches from oui* Parish, Scenes 
in London and its vicinity. Characters, and a dozen Tales. 
Most of these " Sketches of English Life and Character" had 
already attracted no small attention. Several provincial 
Journalists, of whom I was one, appreciating their spirit 
and fidelity, duly "conveyed" them to their own weekly 
journals — at that time there not being a daily paper in 
Great Britain, out of London, though there were several in 



FIRST AUTHORSHIP. 5Y 

I)nl)lin. I, for one, was very glad to reprint these livel}^ 
sketches, the authorship of which was unknown, then and 
until the success of the Pickwick Papers revealed it. At 
first, it was believed, that " Dickens" was as fictitious a 
name as " Boz." An indifferent but much quoted epigram 
published about this time, in the Carthusian, ran thus : 

*' Who the Dickens ' Boz ' could be 
Puzzled many a learned elf; 
But time unveiled the mystery, 
And 'Boz ' appeared as Dickens' self." 

The Sketches had the great merit of being faithful as well 
as humorous and spirited, and were infinitely superior to 
Mr. Wight's ''Morning in Bow street," from the Morning 
Herald, which had been collected into two volumes, a few 
years earlier — also with the great advantage of being illus- 
trated by George Cruikshank. No doubt " Boz " and 
Cruikshank, with pen and pencil, were exaggerated as well 
as sprightl}^ — but it was an exaggeration whose racy humor 
scarcely misrepresented the truth. It has been charged 
that the Sketches, however graphic and varied, chiefly de- 
picted vice, vulgarity, and misery: the drunken clerk 
making a night of it ; the degraded and desperate female 
convict; the abandoned drunkard hurrying on his own 
fearful end ; the retired shopkeeper making a fool of him- 
self by falling in love ; the contemptible squabbles and 
intrigues of a city boarding house ; the overtasked youth 
expiring in the arms of a widowed mother. But the writer 
was neither vicious nor vulgar. He had to show the 
shadows as well as the lights of society which had come 
under his observation, and after all, fun and frolic pre- 
dominate. The author's own taste was apparent in several 
sketches of private theatricals. A description of a balloon- 
ascent from Yauxhall Gardens is full of life, and some of 
the character-sketches are wonderfully good. For example, 
the Parlor Orator — Demosthenes of the tap — who allows no 



58 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKENS. 

one to speak bnt himself, and has obtained, and keeps, his 
position, by objecting to whatever other people say, bj^ 
calling on them to 2^'>^ove the most as well as the least 
abstract propositions. 

We stand, (he saj^s,) in these times, upon a calm eleva' 
lion of intellectual attainment, and not in the dark recess 
of mental deprivation. Proof is what I require — proof, and 
not assertions, in these stirring times. Every gen'lm'n 
that knows me, knows what was the nature and effect of 
my observations, when it was in the contemplation of the 
Old-street Suburban Representative Discover}'' Society, to 
recommend a candidate for that place in Cornwall there — I 
forget the name of it. " Mr. Snobee," said Mr. Wilson, " is 
a fit and proper person to represent the borough in Parlia- 
ment." " Prove it," says I. " He is a friend to Reform," 
says Mr. Wilson. " Prove it," says I. " The abolitionist 
of the national debt, the unflinching opponent of pensions, 
the uncompromising advocate of the negro, the reducer of 
sinecures and the duration of Parliament ; the extender of 
nothing but the suffrages of the people," says Mr. Wilson. 
" Prove it," says I. " His acts prove it," says he. "Prove 
f/vem," says I. "And he could not prove them," said the 
red-faced man looking round triumphantly; "and the 
borough didn't have him ; and if you carried this principle 
to the full extent, you have no debt, no pensions, no 
sinecures, no negroes, no nothing. And then, standing 
upon an elevation of intellectual attainment, and having 
reached the summit of popular prosperity, you might bid 
defiance to the nations of the earth, and erect yourselves 
in the proud confidence of wisdom and superiority. This 
is my argument — this always has been my argument — and 
if I was a Member of the House of Commons to-morrow 
I'd make 'em shake in their shoes with it." And the red- 
faced man having struck the table very hard with his 
clenched fist, by wa}' of adding weight to the declaration, 
smoked away like a brewerj^ 

He is opposed, this Mr. Rogers, by a common-sense 
green-grocer who holds to the optimist principle, and denies 
that he is a slave : 

"What is man? (continued the red-faced specimen of the 



ODD CHARACTERS. 59 

species, jerking his hat indignantly, from its peg on the Tvall.) 
What is an Englishman ? Is he to be trampled upon by 
every oppressor ? Is he to be knocked down at everybody's 
bidding ? What's freedom ? Not a standing army. What's 
a standing army ? Not freedom. Wliat's general happi- 
ness ? Not universal misery. Liberty ain't the window- 
tax, is it ? The Lords ain't the Commons, are they." And 
the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sen- 
tence, in which such adjectives as "dastardly," " oppressive," 
"violent," and "sanguinary," formed the most conspicuous 
words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the 
room, and slammed the door after him. 

In a sketch of the Old Baile}^ we have the germs of two 
well known characters, in Oliver Twist. The first will re- 
mind the reader of the trial of Fagin : 

Turn your eyes to the dock ; watch the prisoner atten- 
tively for a few moments, and the fact is before you, in all 
its painful reality. Mark how restlessly he has been engaged 
for the last ten minutes, in forming all sorts of fantastic 
figures with the herbs which are strewed upon the ledge be- 
fore him ; observe the ashy paleness of his face when a par- 
ticular witness appears, and how he changes his position 
and wipes his clammy forehead, and feverish hands, Vvhen 
tiie case for the prosecution is closed, as if it were a relief 
to him to feel that the jury knew the worst. 

The defence is concluded ; the judge proceeds to sum up 
the evidence, and the prisoner watches the countenances of 
the jury, as a dj'ing man, clinging to life to the very last, 
vainly looks in the face of his physician for one slight ray 
of hope. They turn round to consult ; you can almost hear 
the man's heart beat, as he bites the stalk of rosemary, with 
a desperate eflbrt to appear composed. They resume their 
places — a dead silence prevails as the foreman delivers in 
the verdict — "Guilty!" A shriek bursts from a female in 
the gallery; the prisoner casts one look at the quarter from 
whence the noise proceeded, and is immediately hurried 
from the dock by the jailer. 

In the same sketch, is a j^oung pickpocket, who in reply 
to the question, " Have you any witnesses to j'our char- 
acter ?" answers " Yes, ray Lord ; fifteen gen'lm'n is a vaten 



CO LIFE OF CHAKLES DICKENS. 

outside, and vos a vaten all day yesterday, vich thej told 
nie the night afore my trial vos a comin' on." When the 
witnesses fail to appear, because they never existed, and 
the jailer states that the urchin has been under his care 
twice before, he resolutely denies it, in some such terms as — 
" S'elp me God, gen'lm'n, I never vos in trouble afore — in- 
deed, my Lord, I never vos. It's all a howen to m}^ havhig 
a twin brother, vich has wrongfully taken to prigging, and 
vich is so exactl}^ like me, that no vun ever knows the differ- 
ence atween us." 

If this youth was not own cousin to the Artful Dodger, 
there is no truth in family resemblances ! Further, wlien 
the boy is sentenced to seven years' transportation, we are 
told that " finding it impossible to excite compassion, he gives 
vent to his feelings in an imprecation bearing reference to 
the e3^es of ' old big vig I' and as he declines to take the 
trouble of walking from the dock, he is forthwith carried out 
by two men, congratulating himself on having succeeded in 
giving everybody as much trouble as possible." Surely, in 
speech and action the Artful here stands confessed ? In 
Oliver Twist, he jocosely chaffs the police officers at Bow 
street ; asks the jailer to communicate " the names of them 
two files as was on the bench ;" turns on the magistrate with 
an air of abstraction, and " Did j^ou redress j^ourself to me, 
my man ?" vehemently declares that his attorney is a " break- 
fasting with the Wice-Fresident of the House of Commons ;" 
when committed, threatens the Bench with his vengeance ; 
and, finally retires " grinning in the officer's face, with great 
glee and self-approval." The Parish Beadle, who appears in 
several of these sketches, was reproduced, ere long, as Mr. 
Bumble, and when an interesting event occurs in the house 
of Mr. Robinson, who married one of the four Misses 
Willis, and the street is " very much alarmed at hearing a 
hackneyed coach stop at Mrs. Robinson's door, at half-past 
two o'clock in the morning, out of which emerged a fat old 
woman, in a cloak and nightcap, with a bundle in one hand, 



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 61 

and a pair of pattens in the other, who looked as if she had 
been suddenly knocked up out of bed for some very special 
purpose," who can doubt, for a moment, that he stands, thus 
early, in the august presence of Mrs. Sarah Gamp, friend 
of that Mrs. Harris, and subsequently painted at full length 
in the remarkable adventures of the Chuzzlewit family. It 
is not unusual for authors to develop at length characters 
of which they had originally given glimpses. Scott, in this 
manner, drew, for some of his novels, upon anecdotes which 
he had previously related in the notes to his Scottish min- 
strelsy and other poems. 

Cruikshank's admirable illustrations considerably aided 
the popularity of the Sketches. Before Dickens was born, 
Cruikshank had made himself familiar with the by-ways of 
London, and with the various classes to be found in them. 
Perhaps he even presented such " happy hunting grounds" 
in these large but not very respectable districts to the clever 
young writer, who also had a taste for examining various 
phases of societ3^ Some of Cruikshank's happiest " bits " 
are among these illustrations. The rotund personage who, 
in "The Parish Engine," assails the street-door, is the very 
incarnation of Beadledom. The crowd of children, in an- 
other plate, who rush forth hatless and bounetless, to call a 
hackne}^ coach, is chef d) oeiivre in its quiet effect, and the 
numerous interiors, with tenier-like wealth of detail, are won- 
derful little pictures. As for the two plates of '' The Steam 
Excursion," they are the Before and After of pleasure an- 
ticipated and destroyed. Artist and author are seen in 
thorough unison throughout these remarkable Sketches. 
^hey worked together, as Captain Cuttle would say, " with 
a will." Following up the success of the two volumes of 
" Sketches," illustrated by Cruikshank, and published by 
Mr. J. Macrone, a third volume soon appeared. In a few 
weeks the demand for them was so great, that the supply fell 
short of the demand. It is a tradition in "the trade," that 
a lady of title called at Macrone's, in St. James's Square, 

4 



C2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

for a copy of the work. He had sold the last, but promised 
that she should be supplied by noon, next day, fresh from 
the binder. Could he lend her his own two volumes ? Un- 
fortunately he had sold them. She said she would look in 
the shop for herself, and he handed her out of her carriage. 
She rummaged for a copy, but ineffectually, and at last. 
having lost time and temper, drove off in a pet, without 
having the civility even to bow to the handsome young 
publisher. As the book cost a guinea, it was almost un- 
known to the people. Pickwick, in shilling numbers, was 
within the reach of all, and hit the taste of all. The lady 
who figures in this tale of tales, was the Countess Cowper, 
subsequently married to Lord Palmerston. 



CHAPTER lY. 

FIRST LAURELS WON. — IIOW THE " PICKWICK PAPERS " WERE 
BEGUN. — THE SHILLING NUMBER SYSTEM. — GREEN PAPER 
COVERS. — LEVER AND THACKERAY. — MR. SERGEANT TAL- 
FOURD. — COPYRIGHT. — PROPOSED NIMROD CLUB. — MR. PICK- 
WICK FOUND AT DULWICH. RECEPTION OF PICKWICK. 

— INTRODUCTION OF SAM WELLER. — AUTHOR AND PUB- 
LISHERS. — BULWER. — THE GREAT LITERARY REVIEWS. — 
MISS MITFORD's CRITICISM. — SCOTT AND DICKENS. — WHAT 
PICKWICK HAS DONE. — IN A PICKWICKIAN SENSE. — LADY 
JERSEY'S SAM WELLER' BALL. 

/ Tn 1836, then in his twenty -fifth 3^ear, Charles Dickens 

( reached the culminating poiut in his career. Many a man 

1 who has had the consciousness of power has j^anted for the 

* opportunity of exercising it. " Give me a fulcrum," 

Archimedes is reported to have said, " and I will move the 

earth." The one thing wanted in human life is opportunit3^ 

Without this, aspiration and even ability m^j be said, in the 



ORIGIN OF ''PICKWICK." f,3 

words of one who was himself a powerful man of genius, to 
resemble, " silent thunder." It was in no vain boasting 
mood that Manfred, as his baffled career was nearing its 
close, said, 

'' Ay father ! I have had those earthly visions, 

And noble aspirations in my youth, 

To make my mind the mind of other men, 

The enlightener of the nations." 

So, more or less, genius has ever felt. Rarely does it 
realize its early ambition. Here, in 1836, Dickens had con- 
quered one great difilculty. Youthful and unknown, with- 
out patrons or friends, he had succeeded in getting his 
Sketches placed before the world, in the substantive form 
of a book, and a publisher saw sufficient in them to warrant 
the expense of having them illustrated by George Cruikshank, 
then very famous for the spirit, truth, and humor of his 
designs. The Sketches had been favorably, kindly noticed 
in the public journals, and their author was laboring in 
preparing a third volume, when an incident occurred which 
is best told in his own words. 

I was a 5^oung man of two or three-and twenty, when 
Messrs. Chapman & Hall, attracted by some pieces I was 
at that time writing in the Horning Chronicle newspaper, 
or had just written in the old Blonthhj 3Iagazine (of which 
one series had been lately collected and published in two vol- 
umes, illustrated by Mr. George Cruikshank), waited upon 
me to propose a something that should be published in 
shilling numbers — then only known to me, or, I believe, to 
any body else, by a dim recollection of certain interminable 
novels in that form, which used to be carried about the 
country by peddlers, and over some of which I remember 
to have shed innumerable tears before I had served my 
apprenticeship to Life. 

When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to the partner 
who represented the firm, I recognized in him the person 
from whose hands I had bought, two or three years pre- 
viously, and whom I had never seen before or since, a paper 
— in the " Sketches" called Mr. Minns and his Cousin 



64 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

dropped stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and 
trembling into a dark letter-box, in a dark office, up a dark 
court in Fleet street — appeared in all the glory of print ; 
on which occasion I walked down to Westminster Hall, 
and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were 
so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the 
street, and were not fit to be seen there. I told my visitor 
of the coincidence, which we both hailed as a good omen ; 
and so fell to business. 

The idea propounded to me was, that the monthly some- 
thing should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed 
by Mr. Seymour ; and there was a notion, either on the 
part of that admirable humorous artist, or of my visitor (I 
forget which), that a " Nimrod Club," the members of which 
were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting 
themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, 
would be the best means of introducing these. I objected, 
on consideration, that although born and partly bred in the 
couutry, I was no great sportsman, except in regard of all 
kinds of locomotion ; that the idea was not novel, and had 
been already much used ; that it would be infinitely better 
for the plates to arise naturally out of the text ; and that I 
should like to take mj^ own way, with a freer range of 
English scenes and people, and was afraid I should ulti- 
mately do so in any case, whatever course I might prescribe 
to myself at starting. My views being deferred to, I 
thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number ; 
from the proof-sheets of which, Mr. Seymour made his 
drawing of the Club, and that happy portrait of its founder, 
by which he is always recognized, and wdiich may be said 
to have made him a reality. I connected Mr. Pickwick 
with a club, because of the original suggestion, and I put 
in Mr. Winkle expressly for the use of Mr. Seymour. We 
started with a number of twenty-four pages instead of 
thirty-two, and four illustrations in lieu of a couple. Mr. 
Se3^mour's sudden and lamented death before the second 
number was published, brought about a quick decision upon 
a point already in agitation ; the number became one of 
thirty-two pages with two illustrations, and remained so to 
the end. My friends told me it was a low, cheap form of 
publication, by which I should ruin ail my rising hopes ; and 
how right my friends turned out to be, everybody now knows. 

He added, in a foot-note, "this book [Pickwick] would 



THE GREEN COVERS. G5 

have cost, at the then established price of novels, about 
four guineas and a half." It was sold, when completed, 
neatly half-bound, for one guinea, which, to use a sporting 
phrase, gave an advantage of nine to two in favor of 
the purchaser, without taking into account the addition 
of fortj^-three engravings from original designs. In a 
subsequent chapter, Dickens's artists will be separately 
treated of. 

The issue in shilling numbers, which Dickens's friends 
objected to, as a low, cheap form of publication, was by 
no means a new idea. Two publishing houses, at the 
head of which were Mr. Henry Fisher and Mr. Kelly, 
respectively, were then doing an immense business through- 
out England, by the sale of various works in shilling num- 
bers, distributed by peripatetic agents, and Chapman & 
Hall, the new firm with whose fortunes those of Charles 
Dickens were long to be associated, having considerable 
knowledge of "the trade," shrewdly believed that an 
attractive novel, published in monthly parts, at a low price, 
might safely venture to compete with the thrilling issues of 
the " History of the War," sent out by Mr. Kelly, or even 
such novelties as "The Pilgrim's Progress," "Pamela," 
" Clarissa Harlowe," and " Sir Charles Grandison," printed 
from worn-out stereotype plates. 

The first number of the Pickwick Papers had a green paper 
cover, on which many emblematic designs were given, was 
published on the last day of March, 1836, and the final 
issue, containing title-page, index, dedication, and brief 
preface, and consisting of Parts 19 and 20, was in October, 
1837. The covers of every other serial monthly by Dickens 
was of green paper, like the first, and he often referred to 
it. Some years later, when Charles Lever adopted the 
serial form of publication, " Harry Lorrequer " and its fol- 
lowers invariably had red, while Thackeray's " Vanity Fair" 
appeared in yelloiv covers. These differences of hue were 
severally retained to the end by all three authors. Dickens 
more than once mentioned his " green leaves." 



GG LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

The dedication to Mr. Sergeant Talfourd was at once a 
memorial of j^rivate friendship, arid, the words ran, "as a 
slight and most inadequate acknowledgment of the inestima- 
ble services you are rendering to the literature of 3'our 
countr}^, and of the lasting benefits you will confer upon the 
authors of this and succeeding generations, by securing to 
them and their descendants a permanent interest in the 
copyright of their works." Talfourd, who then sat in the 
House of Commons, as member for Reading, his native 
town, had introduced a new copyright act, in the session of 
1837, which, still bearing the title of " Talfourd's Act," was 
passed, with some modifications, in 1842, and extended the 
term of author's copyright from twenty-eight to forty-two 
3^ears. This, the existing copyright law of Great Britain 
and Ireland, made Talfourd very popular among authors. 
In its operation, however, it has been less advantageous to 
authors than to publishers, who do not paj^more for a forty- 
two than for a twenty-eight years' copyright. With some 
other enthusiasts, Dickens believed that this extension of 
copyright would greatly benefit " those who devote them- 
selves to the most precarious of all pursuits," (literature,) 
and, still addressing his friend, said, " Many a fevered head 
and palsied hand will gather new vigor in the hour of sick- 
ness and distress, from your excellent exertions ; many a 
widowed mother and orphan child, who would otherwise 
reap nothing from the fame of departed genius but its too 
frequent legacy of poverty and suffering, will bear, in their 
altered condition, higher testimony to the value of your 
labors than the most lavish encomiums from lip or pen could 
ever afford." 

In the Preface, of 1837, Dickens said that his original 
purpose "was to place before the reader a constant succession 
of characters and incidents ; to paint them in as vivid colors 
as he could command ; and to render them, at the same time, 
life-like and amusing. " He added that " deferring to the judg- 
ment of others in the outset of the undertaking, he adopted 



MOSES nCKWICK & CO. 67 

the machinery of the club, which was suggested as that best 
adapted to his purpose ; but, finding that it tended rather 
to his embarrassment than otherwise, he gradually aban- 
doned it, considering it a matter of ver3^ little importance 
to the work whether strictly epic justice were awarded to the 
club or not." He claimed, also, as well he might, that 
throughout the book no incident or expression occurs which 
could call a blush into the most delicate cheek, or wound 
the feelings of the most sensitive person, and his closing 
words are, " If any of his imperfect descriptions, while they 
afford amusement to the perusal, should induce only one 
reader to think better of his fellow-men, and to look upon 
the brighter and more kindly light of human nature, he 
would indeed be proud and happy to have led to such a 
result." 

The title of the book was almost fortuitously created. 
Ninirod, as above stated, was first proposed, but, we are told, 
a better name was soon found. Mr. Dickens rushed into the 
publisher's office one day exclaiming with evident delight, 
" I've got it — Moses Pickwick, Bath, coach-master." He 
had just seen painted on the door of a stage coach that 
was passing along the street the name and address ** Moses 
Pickwick & Co., Bath," that worthy firm being the pro- 
prietors of a line of stages running from the great me- 
tropolis to the well-known seat of fiishion in the West of 
England. Moses was changed into Samuel, and so the hero 
got his name. After the trial, when Mr. Pickwick resolved 
to visit Bath, and procec.led to the White Horse Cellar, 
Piccadilly, a noted coaching and booking hotel in those days, 
Sam Weller drew his attention to the fact that Pickwick 
was inscribed on the stage-coach, in gilt letters of goodly 
size, and adds " that ain't all : not content vith writin' up 
Pickwick, they puts ' Moses ' afore it, vich I call addin' in- 
sult to injury, as the parrot said ven they not only took him 
from his native land, but made him talk the English lan- 
gwidge arterwards." His indignation and sorrow when he 



68 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

found that "nobody is to be whopped for taking this here 
liberty," are duly recorded and cannot be forgotten. Mr. 
Chapman, one of the publishers, is said to have described an 
elderly gentleman, with spectacles and gaiters, whom he met 
looking over the Thames at Richmond, and Seymour is 
believed to have embodied this idea, in his full-length of 
Mr. Pickwick, which millions have smiled at. 

The success of Pickwich was by no means so rapid and 
decided as has been generally supposed. The publishers 
did not advertise it extensively, and, though the mode of 
publication (monthly shilling numbers) certainly helped it 
on, the sale was comparatively small. Mr. James Grant says 
in the article already mentioned : " for the first five mouths 
of its existence, Mr. Dickens's first serial, the Pickwick 
Papers, was a signal failure, notwithstanding the fact, 
that Mr. Charles Tilt, at that time a publisher of consider- 
able eminence, made extraordinary exertions, out of friend- 
ship for Messrs. Chapman & Hall, to insure its success. 
He sent out, on what is called sale or return, to all parts of 
the provinces, no fewer than fifteen hundred copies of each of 
the first five parts. This gave the Pickwick Papers a very 
extensive publicity, j^et Mr. Tilt's only result was an aver- 
age sale of fifty copies of each of the five parts. A certain 
number of copies sold, of course, through other channels, 
but commercially, the publication was a decided failure. 
The question was debated by the publishers whether they 
ought not to discontinue the publication of the serial. But 
just while the matter was under their consideration, Sam 
Weller, who had been introduced in the previous number, 
began to attract great attention and to call forth much ad- 
miration. The Press was all but unanimous in praising 
* Samivel ' as an entirely original character, whom none but 
a great genius could have created ; and all of a sudden, in 
consequence of * SamivePs ' popularity, the Pickwick Papers 
rose to an unheard of popularity. The back numbers of the 
work were ordered to a large extent, and of course all idea 



PUBLISHERS' PROFITS. 69 

' of discontinuing it was abandoned. By the time the Pick- 
wick Papers had reached their twelfth number — that being 
half of the numbers of which it was originally intended the 
work should consist — Messrs. Chapman & Hall were so 
gratified with the signal success to which it had now at- 
tained, that they sent Mr. Dickens a cheque for £500, as a 
practical expression of their satisfaction with the sale. The 
work continued to increase in circulation until its comple- 
tion, when the sale had all but reached 40,000 copies. In 
the interval between the twelfth and concluding number, 
Messrs. Chapman & Hall sent Mr. Dickens several cheques, 
amounting in all to £3,000, in addition to the fifteen guineas 
per number wiiich they had engaged at the beginning to 
give him. It was understood at the time, that Messrs. 
Chapman & Hall made a clear profit amounting to nearly 
£20,000 by the sale of the Pickwick Papers, after paying 
Mr. Dickens, in round numbers, £3,500. " 

It maybe rem.embered that Samuel Weller was not intro- 
duced until after the four gentlemen of the Pickwick Club 
had visited the Wardle family at Manor Farm, Dingiey 
Dell, and Jingle's elopement with the too sensitive middle- 
aged young lady, Miss Eacliel Wardle. Mr. Jerdan, who 
had been over thirty years editor of the Literary Gazette, a 
great power in London when the Athenseum was not much 
read, takes credit, in his Autobiograph}^ for having induced 
Dickens to make a great deal of Sam Weller. He says : '* I 
was so charmed with the creation that I could not resist 
the impulse to write to the author, express my admiration, 
and counsel him to develop the novel character largely — to 
the utmost." Afterward, when " Pickwick " was finished, 
and a semi-business Pickwickian sort of dinner ensued, Jer- 
dan was invited to be of the party, with this compliment : 
" I depend upon you above everybody ; Faithfully j^ours, 
always, Charles Dickens." The author occupied the chair, 
with Mr. Serjeant Talfourd as Vice President, and Jerdan 
adds : " Then the pleasant and uncommon fact was stated, 



YO LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

(all the individuals being present and toasted,) that there 
never had been a line of written agreement, hut that author, 
pri7iter, artist and publisher had all proceeded on simply 
verbal assurances, and that there never had arisen a word 
to interrupt or prevent the complete satisfaction of every 
oneJ' 

This is at variance with Mr. Grant's statement that the 
terms upon which Mr. Dickens concluded an arrangement 
with Messrs. Chapman & Hall for the publication of the 
Pickwick Papers, were '' fifteen guineas for each number, the 
number consisting of two sheets, or thirty-two pages. That 
w^as a rather smaller sum than he offered to me, just at the 
same time, to contribute to the Monthly Magazine, then un- 
der my editorship." In fact, the first number contained 
twenty-four, and each subsequent number thirty-two octavo 
pages. 

Bulwer, writing in 1840, fifteen years after the beginning of 
his successful authorship, said, " Long after my name was not 
quite unknown in every other country where English literature 
is received, the great quarterl3^ journals of my own disdained 
to recognize my existence." Dickens was far more fortu- 
nate. In October, 1837, when Pickwick was just completed, 
it was reviewed at length in the Quarterly Review, which 
frankly admitted " That a fresh vein of humor had been 
opened ; that a new and decidedly original genius had 
sprung up ; and the most cursory reference to preceding 
English writers of the comic order will show that, in his 
own peculiar walk, Mr. Dickens is not simply the most 
distinguished, but the first." Twelve months after this the 
Edinburgh Reuiew had an article upon him, eulogizing his 
humanity and humor, his tenderness and truth. 

There is no knowledge of the actual profits of Pic^iyzc/j at 
this time. The impression, even while the story v/as in course 
of publication, was that they were immense. Miss Mitford, 
herself a deservedly popular author, writing to a friend in Ire- 
land, in June, 1837, when Pickwick was in course of comple- 



MISS MITFORD'S OPINION. 71 

tion, said, " So you never heard of the Pickivick Papers ! 
Well, they publish a number once a month, and print 25,000. 
The bookseller has made about £10,000 by the speculation. 
It is fun — London life — but without anything unpleasant ; 
a lady might read it aloud; and this so graphic, so 
individual, and so true that you could courtesy to all the 
people as you see them in the streets. I did think there 
had not been a place where English is spoken to which ' Boz ' 
had not penetrated. All the boys and girls talk his fun 
— the bo3^s in the streets; and yet those who are of the 
highest taste like it the most. Sir Benjamin Brodie takes 
it to read in his carriage, between patient and patient ; and 
Lord Denman studies Fickwick on the bench while the jury 
are deliberatiug. Do take some means to borrow the 
Fickwick Papers. It seems like not having heard of 
Hogarth, whom he resembles greatlj^ except that he takes 
a far more cheerful view, a Shakespearian view, of humanit}^. 
It is rather fragmentary, except the trial (No. 11 or 12), 
which is as complete and perfect as an}^ bit of comic writing- 
in the English language. You must read the Pickwick 
Papers.''^ In the same letter, criticizing Talfourd's Life of 
Charles Lamb, Miss Mitford says, " It consists almost wholly 
of his letters, which are entertaining, although not elegant 
enough to give one much pleasure. It is very odd that I 
should not mind the perfectly low-life of the Pickivick 
Papers, because the closest copies of things that are, and 
yet dislike the want of elegance in Charles Lamb's letters, 
which are merely his own fancies ; but I think you will 
understand the feeling." 

That Brodie, head of the medical profession in England, 
should have read Fickwick in his carriage, as he paid his 
usual round of visits, showed, no doubt, a great interest in 
the work. Another member of the same craft, nearly one 
hundred and fifty yenvs earlier, had done more than 7^ead, 
for he actually wrote a popular poem in his chaise. This 
was Sir Samuel Garth, a famous London doctor, who, in 



12 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

1699, pablishecl ''The Dispensatory," a poem, which ran 
through seven editions in a few years, and was warmly com- 
mended by Pope, a difficult critic as well as a great poet. 
As for Lord Denman, then Chief Justice of England, read- 
ing Pickwick on the bench, while a jury was deliberating 
on the verdict, literary history supplies a singular parallel, 
for Lockhart relates, in his " Life of Sir Walter Scott," that, 
one of the judges, in Edinburgh, felt so much interested in one 
of the Waverley Novels, just published, that he took it into 
court with him, and finding or fancying that the subject 
matter in one of its chapters somewhat bore upon a trial 
then proceeding, pulled out the volume, and read it, with 
infinite humor and gusto, as part of his charge to the jury I 
Before " Pickwick" was completed, the sale rose to 40,000 
a month, and the demand for back numbers to make up sets, 
was considerable. It has been said, without much considera- 
tion, that Pickioick rushed into more enormous popularity 
in a few months, than had ever been obtained by any first 
work of fiction except " Waverley." In 1814, when that 
romance appeared, Miss Edgeworth was the only living 
novelist who had an}^ real hold on the public mind. In 
183 1, when P^c^^y^c^ was being published, James, Ainsworth, 
Bulwer, Gait, Mrs. Gore, Mrs. Trollope, Disraeli, Grattan, 
Lover, Banim, Griffin, Warren, Theodore Hook, MissMitford, 
Miss Landon, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Horace Smith, Lister, Ward, 
Marrj^at, Lady Blessington, Croly, Hood, W. H. Maxwell, 
Lady Morgan, and many others, literally had the ear of the 
public. Therefore, the new and anonymous competitor for 
fame had to hold his own, like Ivanhoe at the tournament, 
against all comers. Scott had found an uncultivated waste, 
as it were, which soon bloomed in fragrance and beauty 
under his wand, truly that of an enchanter. Dickens, on 
the other hand, had an army of rivals to oppose, and only 
succeeded by proving himself equal, at least, to the greatest. 
Thackeray was then (1837) merely writing for bread, in 
Fraser^s Magazine. Charles Lever had not then appeared. 



MR. PICKWICK'S PORTRAIT. T3 

Of all the rest, Bulwer best has kept his place, and it is a 
question whether, half a century hence, the Lord of Kneb- 
worth may occupy a place, on the roll of fame, as high as 
"Boz" himself; for if Dickens has sketched life in the middle 
and lower ranks of England, in the second quarter of the 
nineteenth century, Bulwer's Caxton novels have shown the 
political and fashionable phases of English society, with a 
spirit and fidelity which no one had exhibited before. 

When " Waverley" was published (in July, 1814), it did 
not create any remarkable sensation. The first edition, of 
1,000 copies, moved slowly oflf in five weeks. Then, on a 
report that none but Scott could have written the book, 3,000 
copies more were sold before November. Anthor and pub- 
lisher, on a fair division of the profits, each made £612 in 
these four months. Once established, however, and followed 
up, with all the abounding fertility of creative genius, by 
other novels and romances, in rapid succession, *' Waverley" 
has held its own well, as "father of a line of kings," but 
without the early popularity of Pickwick. 

No doubt, the admirers of the Sketches by " Boz," which 
may be said to contain the germs of many of the characters 
which he subsequently elaborated, were glad to meet the 
author in a new work. They had found him shrewd and 
clever, truthful even when he ran into caricature, and unu- 
sually amusing. Attention was first drawn to Pickwick by 
the engravings. There was something very ludicrous in 
taking, as the hero of a novel, such an odd-looking little old 
gentleman as Mr. Samuel Pickwick, and, as he repeatedly 
came up in the whole twenty numbers, readers recognized 
liim, as if he were a familiar acquaintance. Beginning merel}^ 
to amuse, and in the secondary position of illustrating an 
artist's comic designs, it can readil}^ be seen how soon and 
how completely this young anthor, then only twentj'-four 
3^ears old, rose above his original position. He would be 
an unusually acute reader who could clearly state what the 
plot of Pickwick really is. Had it been published, at first, 



Y4 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

as an entire book, without the illustrations, it would proba- 
bly have been a failure. It contained as much letter-press 
as any three of the ordinary Waverley Novels, and might 
have been voted tedious. But, appearing in monthly parts, 
each (to use the words of Miss Edgeworth's postillion), clo- 
sing with a sensational "gallop for the avenue," it did not 
too much or too long engage the attention, and there was 
left in the reader's mind a to-be-continued expectation of 
the next number. 

Dickens, in his later preface, which explained how he was 
engaged to write the story, said : 

It has been observed of Mr. Pickwick, that there is a de- 
cided change in his character, as these pages proceed, and 
that he becomes more good and more sensible. I do not 
think this change will appear forced or unnatural to my 
readers, if they will reflect that in real life the peculiarities 
and oddities of a man who has anything whimsical about 
him, generally impress us first, and that it is not until we 
are better acquainted with him that we usually begin to 
look below these superficial traits, and to know the better 
part of him. 

Glancing fourteen years back, Mr. Dickens said : 

I have found it curious and interesting, looking over the 
sheets of this reprint, to mark what important social im- 
provements have taken place about us, almost imperceptibly, 
even since they were originally written. The license of 
Counsel, and the degree to which Juries are ingeniousl}'' be- 
wildered, are yet susceptible of moderation; while an im- 
provement in the mode of conducting Parliaraentar}^ Elec- 
tions (especially for counties) is still within the bounds of 
possibility. But, legal reforms have pared the claws of 
Messrs. Dodson & Fogg ; a spirit of self-respect, mutual 
forbearance, education, and co-operation, for such good 
ends, has diffused itself among their clerks ; places far apart 
are brought together, to the present convenience and ad- 
vanta2:e of the Public, and to the certain destruction, in time, 
of a host of petty jealousies, blindnesses, and prejudices, 
b}^ which the Public alone have alwaj^s been the sufferers; 
the laws relating to imprisonment for debt are altered ; and 
the Fleet Prison is pulled down ! 



IN A PICKWICKIAN SENSE. -75 

He added, (this was twenty 3^ears ago, when little more 
than one-third of his literary career had been run) : 

With such a retrospect comprised within so short a 
period, who knows, but it may be discovered, within this 
Century, that there are even magistrates in town and 
country, who should be taught to shake hands every day 
with Common Sense and Justice ; that even Poor Laws 
may have mercy on the weak, the aged, and unfortunate ; 
that Schools, on the broad principles of Christianity, 
are the best adornment for the length and breadth of this 
civilized land ; that Prison-doors should be barred on the 
outside, no less heavily and carefully than they are barred 
within ; that the universal diffusion of common means of 
decency and health is as. much the right of the poorest of 
the poor, as it is indispensable to the safety of the rich, and 
of the State ; that a few petty boards and bodies — less than 
drops in the great ocean of humanit^^ which roars around 
them — are not to let loose Fever and Consumption on God's 
creatures at their will, or always to keep their little fiddles 
going, for a Dance of Death I 

The object of the work, at first, v/as simply to amuse; — 
in the author's own words, '* to place before the reader a 
constant succession of characters and incidents ; to paint 
them in as vivid colors as he could command ; and to render 
them, at the same time, life-like and amusinor." The cum- 
brous machinery of the Pickwick Club, which opened the 
work, was soon dispensed with. All, except its tediousness, 
that now rests in the mind, is the quaint humor of Messrs. 
Pickwick and Blotton abusing each other, in the heartiest 
manner, like vestrymen at a parish meeting, and eventually 
ending the dispute by exchanging compliments, and de- 
claring that they had respectively used harsh language 
" only in a Pickwickian sense." Just about that time a 
somewhat similar scene had taken place, in a great legisla- 
tive body at Westminster, and the parties got out of it by 
mutually conceding that they had abused each other only 
" in a Parliamentary sense." This was the first hit in 
Pickwick that told. The idea was too good to be lightly 



Y6 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

parted with, so at Mr. Bob Sawyer's party, in his lodgings 
in the Borough, Lant-street, — the particular localit}^ in which 
Mrs. Raddle was a house-keeper, has lately been swept 
away, I hear, to make room for the extension of a railroad 
station — it was worked up again. The great quarrel be- 
tween Messrs. Noddy and Gunter, which had a "pistols for 
two and coffee for one " aspect, at one time, ends in both 
j'oung gentlemen quietly eating their own words, and ex- 
pressing their mutual admiration in the warmest terms. 

Having to supply thirty-two octavo pages of letter-press 
each month, Mr. Dickens, starting with no settled purpose, 
except that of amusing his readers, now and then eked out 
his narrative by dipping into his portfolio for sketches and 
tales already written, and working these into his text. 
For the most part, he did this in a clumsy manner. Upon 
Pickwick were thus engrafted " the Stroller's Tale," 
related by the Dismal Man, at Rochester ; " the Convict's 
Return," told b}^ the Clergyman at Wardle's farm; "A 
Madman's Manuscript," purporting to have been written 
by the same ; "the Bagman's Story," told in the Commercial 
room at Eatanswill ; "the Story of the Queer Client," 
related by Jack Bamber of Gray's Inn; Wardle's "Story 
of the Goblins who stole a Sexton ;" " the True Legend of 
Prince Bladud ;" and "the Story of the Bagman's Uncle;" 
all of these had probably been written as portions of a new 
volume of "Sketches." The}^ merely filled up space in 
Pickwick to save Dickens the trouble of composition, and 
very much clogged the story. Except in " Nicholas 
Nickleby," where, on the Yorkshire journey, a couple of 
gentlemen tell stories against each other, and in " Master 
Humphrey's Clock," where they legitimately came in as 
portions of the regular " works," Mr. Dickens never again 
tried to produce stories within a story. 

The adventures of the Pickwickians in the country are 
fresh and lively, but the finding of the stone with the 
inscription and the subsequent proceedings thereon, are 



THE SAM WELLER BALL. *11 

abundfiiitly absurd. It was nothing new to burlesque the 
proceedings of an Antiquarian Society, and the idea of 
converting " Bil Stumps, his mark," into something which 
was taken or mistaken for an antique inscription, was 
CAddently suggested by the A. D. L. L. which Jonathan 
Oldbuck, in " the Antiquary" fancied must signify Agricola 
Dlcavit Libens Lubens, while Edie Ochiltree proved that 
it only indicated Archie Drum's Lang Ladle. It is no 
secret tliat Scott got his idea from an amusing incident 
recorded in the apocrj^phal Autobiography of Madame du 
Barry. 

The adventures at Mr, Leo Hunter's, the quarrel with 
Mr. Peter Magnus about the Lady in Yellow Curl Papers, 
and a few such incidents, are feeble enough. But, the mo- 
ment that Dickens brought us to Sam Weller, in the court- 
yard of the old Inn in the Borough, it was evident that he 
got upon terimfirma. The way in which Sam, as " Boots" in 
that hostlerie, counts up the company there is inimitable : — 
" There's a wooden leg in number six ; there's a pair of 
Hessians in thirteen ; there's two j^air of halves in the 
commercial ; there's these here painted tops in the snuggery 
inside the bar ; and five more tops in the coffee-room." 

From that auspicious hour Sam Weller is master of the 
situation, and flavors the whole stor3^ It has been stated, 
in a Quarterly Review, that while " The Pickwick Papers" 
were yet unfinished, a fashionable lady of high rank, — the 
Countess of Jersey, I think, — sent out invitations to a ball, 
the condition of acceptance pencilled upon each card being 
" Provided 3'ou will admit that Sam Weller is a gentle- 
man." 

Among the more striking incidents in Pickwich, are the 
duel which did 7iot take place between Dr. Slammer of the 
9tth and Mr. Winkle ; the sayings and doings of Mr. Alfred 
Jingle at Diugley Dell ; the Election at Eatanswill ; the 
Keturn Game between Sam Weller and Mr. Job Trotter ; 
the Christmas in the country ; the Bachelors' Party at Mr. 
Bob Sawyers ; the Trial of Bardell v. Pickwick ; the Foot- 

5 



78 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

men's Soiree at Bath; the scenes, alternately comic and touch- 
ing, in the Fleet Prison ; the final exit of Jingle and Trotter; 
the scenes where Mr. Soloman Pell figures as a legal gen- 
tleman of great powers ; and the conclusion, in which Sam 
elects not to leave his master, and finall}^ like several 
others in the tale, settles down into matrimony. 

The defect of the storj^, chiefly arising out of the aimless 
manner in which it had been begun, is the inconsistency of 
its principal characters. All its events take place within a 
single year, so that the mellowing of the leading personages 
cannot be the effect of age. Mr. Pickwick, when first en- 
countered, is a mere butt, neither doing nor saying very 
wisel}^ and his immediate friends were made to match. 
These are Tupman, an obese ci devant jeime homme, ridicu- 
lous from his tendency to lose his head when he is in com- 
pany with one of the softer sex ; Mr. Winkle, a sporting 
cliaracter, who can neither ride, shoot, nor skate ; and Mr. 
Snodgrass, "to this day reputed a great poet among his 
friends and acquaintances, although we do not find that he 
has ever written anything to encourage the belief." They 
start with all sorts of blunders and follies of speech and 
action, but as the story advances, severally exhibit common 
sense, instinctive good , feeling, high principle, and a 
fine sense of propriety and honor. Mr. Pickwick in the 
Fleet, a vohmtar}^ prisoner, rather than satisfy the heavy 
exactions of some nefarious limbs of the law, but magnani- 
mously paying Mrs. Bardell's law-costs, as well as his own, 
rather than that she should also be a prisoner in such a 
place, is not the ridiculous old gentleman who is presented 
In the opening chapter, standing upon a Windsor chair, in 
an extravagant position, making a speech to the assembled 
Pickwickians in the Club. It was a sagacious critic who 
wrote, " The fact is, that Phiz is consistent in his concep- 
tion of Mr. Pickwick : throughout he is the same idiotic 
lump of bland blockheadism, unrelieved by thought or feel- 
ing, from beginning to end. In the hands of Boz, he com- 
mences a butt and ends as a hero." 



MAGxVZlNE EDITOR. "jg 



CHAPTER Y. 

"the WITS^ miscellany." — DICKENS EDITS BENTLEY'S. — 
DOUGLAS JERROLD. ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. — DlCKENS' CON- 
TRIBUTIONS. — OLIVER TWIST. — PURPOSE AND MORAL, — 

author's LAW. — FAGIN'S CONVICTION. — JACOB'S ISLAND 

DRAMATIC VERSIONS. 

The Sketches by Boz, which so favorably drew the then 
new publishing firm of Chapman & Hall towards the 
then scarcely known young author, and the popularity 
which the Pichwick Papers had obtained among all classes 
of readers, also attracted the notice of Mr. Richard Bentley, 
of New Burlington-street, Loudon, a publisher, educated at 
St. Paul's School, London, where two of his class-mates 
were Sir Frederick Pollock, Ex-Chief Baron of the Exche- 
quer, and the Rev. Richard Harris Barham, to be remem- 
bered as author of " The Ingoldsby Legends." It had been 
Mr. Bentley's determination, for some time, to establish a 
periodical,— probabl}^ as a set-off to the New Monthly Maga- 
zine, long the property of his late partner, Mr. Henry Col- 
burn. It had been announced under the title of The Wits^ 
Miscellany, but an editor had not been found, though Theo- 
dore Hook had been spoken to, with a natural distrust, how- 
ever, of his erratic and irregular habits. Just then, as if to 
give a spur to Bentley, Tlie Humorist was advertised, 
which literally, before it was published, was incorporated 
with Colburn's New Monthly, of which Hook was made 
editor. At last, thinking that " Boz," who was then 
well-advanced with his Pickioick Papers, would be the right 
man in the right place, Mr. Bentley made him such 
an offer with a large editorial stipend, that he accepted it. 
On the first of January, 183*7, appeared Beniley^s Miscellany, 



80 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

No. I., edited by " Boz." On the change of name, Douglas 
Jerrold, who was nothmg if not satirical, said, " I can under- 
stand, Bentley, why yon should give up the first title of the 
TFiVs' Miscellany, but am puzzled in thinking what could 
have induced you to run into the opposite extreme and call 
it ^ Bentley ^s.^^^ A strong and well-conducted periodical it 
was, during the two 3^ears Mr. Dickens was over it. He 
installed George Cruikshank as its artist in ordinary, R, W. 
Buss and H. K. Browne also contributing, as well as 
Samuel Lover, who etched the clever illustrations to his own 
"Handy And}^," the opening chapters of which appeared in 
Bentley. There also were portraits on steel of sundry cel- 
ebrities — which had already donej^eoman's service in others 
of Mr. Bentley's publications. The first number was opened 
with a Song of the Month, by Father Prout, and there were 
similar introductions in succeeding numbers, by Dr. Ma- 
ginn, W. H. Ainsworth, Samuel Lover, and others. 

Dickens gathered around him, as his staff, many cele- 
brated writers of the time. Besides those already named, 
were Theodore Hook, T. L. Peacock, W. H. Maxwell, T. 
Haynes Bayly, J. Fenimore Cooper, Edward Howard, Charles 
Oilier, James Morier, J. Hamilton Reynolds, Charles White- 
head, Sir George Rose, William Jerdan, R. H. Barham, 
George Hogarth, Richard Johns, Captain Medwin, Prince 
Puckler Muskau, George Dance, and J. Sheridan Knowles. 
Here were the leading writers in Bentley's first volume, and 
Dickens, to use a term from the road, " had them well in 
hand." His own articles can soon be counted up : — " The 
Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble, Mayor of Mud fog," and 
" The Pantomime of Life," not included in Dickens' own 
collection of his writings, but republished in Petersons' 
editions of the Sketches. There also were two " Re- 
ports of the Proceedings of the Mudfog Association," bur- 
lesquing the proceedings of the then recently established 
"British Association for the Advancement of Science." 
These reports, which are characterized by humor rather 



FATHER PROUT AND BOZ. 81 

brond than subtle, I republish in the present volume, with 
other inedited productions of "Boz." 

The editorial address, dated November 30th, 1837, at the 
close of the first 3'ear, prefixed to the second volume of 
Bentley^s Mif^ cell any, was yqyj brief, merely "hoping to make 
many changes for the better, and none for the worse ; and 
to show that, while we have one grateful eye to past patron- 
age, we have another wary one to future favors ; in that, 
thus, like the heroine of the sweet poem, descriptive of the 
faithlessness and perjur3^of Mr. John Oakham, of the Royal 
Navy, we look two ways at once." This was not very bril- 
liant, neither was the closing sentence — " These, and a 
hundred other great designs, preparations, and surprises are 
in contemplation, for the fulfilment of which we are already 
bound in two volumes cloth, and have no objection, if it be 
any additional security to the public, to stand bound in 
twenty more." 

It may be stated here that a fac-simile reprint of Bentley's 
3Ii.scellany was begun, with the illustrations, by William 
Lewer, publisher, New York. It commenced with the num- 
ber for January, 1838, — so that Vol. III. of the English was 
Yol. I. of the American edition. 

Perhaps this is the most suitable place for a poetical ad- 
dress to " Boz," which was published in Benfley, for January, 
18o8, and even was not reprinted in the author's own edition 
of the " Keliques of Father Prout." At this distance of 
time, it is a literary cariosity : 

POETICAL EPISTLE FROM FATHER PROUT TO BOZ. 

A rhyme ! a rhyme ! from a distant clime, — from the g-iilph of the Genoese, 
O'er the riiirgeci scalps of the Julian Alps, dear Boz ! 1 send you these. 
To liirht the Vtlck your candlestick holds up, or, should you list. 
To usher in the yarn you spin concerning Oliver Twist. 

n. 

Immense applause you've o:ained, oh, Boz ! through continental Europe ; 
Tou'U make Pickwick oecumenick ;^ of fame you have a sure hope : 
For here your books are found, gadzooks ! in greater luxe than any 
That have issued yet, hotpress'd or wet, from the types of Galignani. 



82 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



But neither when you sport your pen, oh, potent rairth-compeller ! 
Winn'ng our hearts "in monthly parts," can Pickwick or Sam Weller 
Cause us to weep with pathos deep, or shake with lau2:h spasmodical 
As when you clraiu 3'our copious vein for Bentley's periodical. 



Folks all enjoy your Parish Boy— so truly you depict him : 
But I alack"! while thus you track your stinted poor-law's victim, 
Must thinly; of some poor nearer home, — poor who, unheeded perish, 
By squires despoiled, by "patriots " gulled, — I mean the starving Irish. 



Yet there's no dearth of Irish mirth, which, to a mind of feeling, 
Seemeth to be the Helot's glee before the Spartan reeling ; 
Such gloomy thought o'ercometh not the glow of England's humor. 
Thrice happy isle ! long may the smile of genuine joy illume her ! 



Write on, young sage ! still o'er the page pour forth the flood of fancy ; 
Wax still more droll, wave o'er the soul Wit's wand of necromancy. 
Behold ! e'en now around your brow th' immortal laurel thickens ; 
Yea, Swift or Sterne might gladly learn a thing or two from Dickens. 



A rhyme ! a rhyme ! from a distant clime, — a song from the sunny south ! 
A ffoodly theme, so Boz but deem the measure not uncouth. 
Would, for tliy sake, that " Prout " could make his bow in fashion finer, 
^'Fartant^' (from thee) "pour la Syrie," for Greece and Asia Minor. 

Ge7wa, lUh December, 1837. 

The leading attraction of Beniley^s Miscellany was a story 
called Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy^s Progress, written 
by Charles Dickens, and illustrated by George Cruikshank. 
It was begun in the second number, (February, 1837.) 

Oliver Twist, evidently written with great care, is one of 
Dickens's most artistical productions, but the story is not in 
accordance with the sub-title : that is, the hero is only a par- 
ish bo}^ for a very short time. In the chapter which treats 
of Dickens's relations with artists, this difference and its 
cause will be explained. 

In his original preface to Oliver Twist, Mr. Dickens states 
that the greater part of that story was originally published 
in a magazine. Read as a whole, it bears little appearance 
of having been written from month to mouth, a great por- 



OLIVER TWIST. 83 

tion of it while Pickwick was also in hand, and published. 
The storj, as a story, is well told, the characters are well 
grouped and strikingly contrasted ; there is marked iudividu- 
alit}^ in what they say and do, and poetical justice is awarded, 
at the close, by the punishment of Fagin, Sikes, and Monks 
— to say nothing of inferior personages. The parish boy 
gets into a den of thieves, from which he tvv^ice escapes, with 
the singular good fortune, each time, of falling into the hands 
of relations or friends. The comic humor of the author is 
largely exhibited in this tale. Mr. Bumble is amusing, from 
first to last, and his tea-table wooing of Mrs. Corney, matron 
of the workhouse, is one of the richest scenes in fiction. 
Master Charles Bates and the light-fingered but facetious 
''Artful Dodger," afford entertainment whenever they ap- 
pear. There is a rough humor, too, in Mr. Noah Claypole, 
and his government of Charlotte, over whom he exercises 
a very rigid rule, is consistent throughout. Giles and " the 
Boy " Brittle are rather sketches than portraits. Mrs. May- 
lie, Rose and her lover, Mr. Losberne and Mr. Brownlow, 
to say nothing of Mr. Grimwig, whose talent chiefly con- 
sists in offering to eat his own head if such and such things 
did not occur, are rather commonplace characters, and, 
even thus early, Dickens showed and exhibited as much in- 
capacity for writing love scenes as Cruikshank for sketching 
pretty women. 

It is in the thieves' den that Dickens put forth his great 
power, exhibiting Kembrandt-like skill in the arrangement, 
by contrast of his lights and shadows. We are interested, 
despite of ourselves. We perceive that it is among a low 
and villainous gang that he has placed us : that, as he says 
himself, " Sikes is a thief, and Fagin a receiver of stolen 
goods, that the boy's a pickpocket, and the girl is a pros- 
titute." He adds : 



I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest 
good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I have always 



84 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

believed tliis to be a recognized and established truth, laid 
down by the greatest men the world has ever seen, constantly 
acted upon by the best and wisest natures, and confirmed 
b3^ the reason and experience of every thinking mind. I 
saw no reason, w^hen I wrote this book, why the very dregs 
of life, so long as their speech did not offend the ear, should 
not serve the purpose of a moral, at least as well as its froth 
and cream. Nor did I doubt that there lay festering in Saint 
Giles's as good materials towards the Truth as any flaunt- 
ing in Saint James's. 

In this spirit, when I wished to show, in little Oliver, the 
principle of Good surviving through every adverse circum- 
stance, and triumphing at last ; and when 1 considered 
among w^hat companions I could try him best, having re- 
gard to that kind of men into whose hands he would most 
naturally fall ; I bethought myself of those who figure in 
these volumes. When I came to discuss the subject more 
maturely with mj^self I saw many strong reasons for pur- 
suing the course to which I was inclined. I had read of 
thieves by scores — seductive fellows (amiable for the most 
part), faultless in dress, plump in poc-ket, choice in horse- 
flesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry, great at a song, 
a bottle, pack of cards, or dice-box, and lit companions for 
the bravest. But I had never met (except in Hogarth) 
w^itli the miserable reality. It appeared to me that to draw 
a knot of such associates in crime as really do exist ; to 
paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, 
in all the squalid poverty of their lives ; to show them as 
they really are, for ever skulking uneasily through the dirti- 
est paths of life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows clo- 
sing up their prospect, turn them where the}^ mny ; it ap- 
joeared to me that to do this, would be to attempt a some- 
thing which was greatly needed, and w^hich would be a 
service to society. And therefore I did it, as I best could. 

There is great power, with some inconsistencj^ in the later 
development of Nancy S^'kes : — she first appears as a drab, 
a loose liver, a drunkard, and a thief, but closes as a 
heroine. At the beginning, she talks the ordinar3' slang of 
London, but in her interview with Rose Ma3die, near Lon- 
don Bridge, her language is pure, impressive, and dignified. 

In Oliver Twist, as in Pickwick, Nicklehy, and other 



HIS LAW-SCENES. 85 

tales, Mr. Dickens brinr^s his legal experience to account. 
But this is not so much knowledge of the law, as a recol- 
lection of the quirks of attorne^^s' clerks, and the practice 
of the courts. The trial-scene in Pickioick, which its author 
used to read with great dramatic effect, is one of his most 
successful productions, but it must have been a remarkable 
jury which could have given £750 damages in the case of 
Bardell v. Pickwick, on such slight evidence as was heard 
in court, and little Mr. Perker, defendant's attorney, must 
have been yqyj careless, stupid, or ignorant, inasmuch as 
counsel, instructed by him, did not move the court, on the 
first da}' of next term, for a rule nisi to show cause why 
there should not be a new trial, on the ground that the ver- 
dict had been obtained on insufficient evidence. How Mr. 
Sergeant Talfourd, w^ho read and revised most of Dickens's 
earlier novels, did not hit the legal "blot" in this case, must 
alwaj'S be wondered at. So, in Nicholas Nickleby, we find 
Uncle Ralph, the Usurer, terribly frightened at the possible 
result of his dealings with Arthur G^lide — such dealing con- 
sisting of the private execution of a bond, without witness 
or stamp, securing a sura of monej^ to one rogue, on the 
celebration of marriagre between another in the aoree- 
ment, with a rich young lady. Thai was not illegal. So, 
finally, in Oliver Twist, Fagin is tried and convicted as an 
accessory before the fact in the murder of Nancy, whereas 
he had only made Noah Claypole.. the spy, describe Nancy's 
private interview with Rose Maylie, at the bridge, which 
Sikes impatiently listened to and then burst out : 

" Hell's fire !" cried Sikes, breaking fiercely from the Jew. 
"Let me 2:0 !" Flino:ino: the old man from him, he rushed 
from the room, and darted wildly and furiously up the 
stairs. 

" Bill, Bill !" cried the Jew, following him hastily. " A 
word — only a word." 

The word would not have been exchanged, but that the 
housebreaker was unable to open the door, on which he was 
expending fruitless oaths and violence when the Jew came 
panting out. 



86 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

" Let me out," said Sikes. " Don't speak to me — it's not 
safe. Let me out, I say !" 

" Hear me speak a word," rejoined the Jew, laying Lis 
hand upon tlie lock. " You won't be " 

" Well," replied the other. 

'' You won't be — too — violent, Bill ?" whined the Jew. 

The day was breaking, and there was light enough for 
the men to see each other's faces. They exchanged one 
brief glance ; there was a fire in the eyes of both which 
could not be mistaken. 

" I mean," said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise 
was now useless — "not too violent for safety. Be crafty, 
Bill, and not too bold." 

Sikes made no reply, but pulling open the door of which 
the Jew had turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets. 

Here Fagin, having taken means to work up Sikes into 
a passion, merely recommends him not to be too violent, — 
to be crafty, and not too bold. But Fagin is tried, as 
accessory — most powerful is that scene — and is really con- 
victed only of having "exchanged one brief glance," there 
then being " a fire in the eyes of both which could not 
be mistaken." A Tombs' lawyer, with Fagin as his client, 
would have saved his life, I suspect, on the ground of want 
of jjositive, however strong might have been the presump- 
tive, evidence against him. At the same time, every reader 
rejoices in the bad man's fate. 

The anomaly in the book is that under such training as 
he had received from the "" porochial authorities," — Mrs. 
Mann and Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, Mr. Sowerberry the 
coffin-maker — and Fagin the fence, Oliver Twist should 
figure as a model of honest}^, frankness, and refinement. 
Children who emerge from the meagre misery of work- 
house slavery, do not usually turn out so well as this. 

Oliver Twist had the honor of being thrice introduced to 
the public. First, in the preface to the edition of 1839 ; 
next, in April, 1841, when the next edition was published; 
and finally in the edition of March, 1850. The third preface 
has not latterly been reprinted. It was a defence of the 



THE CITY ALDERMAN. 8*7 

author against Sir Peter Laurie, a thickheaded alderman of 
London. In one of the closing chapters, which narrated, in 
a most effective manner, the well-merited fate of Sikes, 
that tragedy was located in a place called Jacob's Island, 
near that part of the Thames on w^hich the church of 
Rotherhithe abuts, be3"ond Dockhead, in the Borough of 
Southwark, and Dickens described it as the filthiest, the 
strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities 
that are trodden in London, wholly unknown by name to 
the great mass of its inhabitants. The view of this foul 
den, he thus presented : 

To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through 
a maze of close, narrow, and muddj^ streets, thronged by the 
roughest and poorest of water-side people, and devoted to 
the traffic they may be supposed to occasion. The cheapest 
and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops, the 
coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle 
at the salesman's door, and stream from the house paraj^et 
and windows. Jostling with unemployed laborers of the 
lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, 
ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river, he 
makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive 
sights and smells from the narrow alle3^s which branch off 
on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponder- 
ous wagons that bear great piles of merchandise from the 
stacks of warehouses that rise from everj^ corner. Arriving 
at length in streets remoter and less frequented than those 
through which he had passed, he walks beneath tottering 
house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls 
that seem to totter as he passes, chimne3'S, half crushed, 
half hesitating to fall, windows guarded b}^ rust}^ iron bars, 
that time and dust have almost eaten away, and every im- 
aginable sign of desolation and neglect. 

In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead, in the Borough 
of Southwark, stands Jacob's Island, surrounded by a 
muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep, and fifteen or twenty 
wide, when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known 
in these days as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from 
the Thames, and can always be filled up at high water by 
opening the sluices at the head mills, from which it took its 



83 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

old name. At such times, a stranger, loolving from one of 
the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see 
the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from 
their back doors and windows buckets, jars, domestic uten- 
sils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when 
his e3'e is turned from these operations to the houses them- 
selves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene 
before him. Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs 
of half-a-dozen houses, wath holes from which to look upon 
the sluice beneath ; windows broken and patched, with poles 
thrust out on which to {\ry linen that is never there ; 
rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would 
seem too tainted even for the dirt and squallor which they 
shelter ; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above 
the mud, and threatening to fall into it— as some have 
done ; dirt-besmeared walls and deca3dng foundations ; 
ever}^ repulsive lineament of poverty, everj^ loathsome indi- 
cation of filth, rot, and garbage — all these ornament the 
banks of Folly Ditch. 

In Jacob's Island the warehouses are roofless and empty, 
the walls are crumblino- down, the windows are windows no 
more, the doors are faliTug into the street, the chimnej's are 
blacktiiied, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty 3'ears 
ago, before losses and chancer}^ suits came upon it, it wns a 
thriving place ; but now it is a desolate island indeed. The 
houses have no owners ; they are broken open and entered 
upon by those who have the courage, and there the}^ live and 
there they die. They must have powerful motives for a 
secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition 
indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob's Island. 

This was written in the autumn of 1838. The late 
Bishop of London, (Dr. Charles James Blomfield,) who was 
active in promoting Social Reforms, presided, in Februar}^, 
1850, at a public meeting in favor of Sanitary Reforms in 
London, and particularly stated that the houses in Jacob's 
Island could receive such sanitary improvements at a cost 
of about a penny three farthings per week per house. 
The Bishop mentioned that Mr. Dickens had described 
Jacob's Island, and Mr. Dickens, who also spoke, " confessed 
that soft impeachment." A few days after this meeting Sir 



JACOB'S ISLAND. 89 

Peter Laurie addressed the Vestry of, Marylebone, a parish 
some miles from Jacob's Island and in another county, 
ridiculed the idea of their being 1,300 houses on forty acres of 
ground, and added, " The Bishop of London, poor soul, in 
his simplicity thought there reixWy was such a place, 
Tvhereas it turned out that it existed only in a work of 
fiction, written by Mr. Charles Dickens ten years ago. 
The fact was admitted by Mr. Charles Dickens himself at 
the meeting, and he (Sir P. Laurie) had extracted his 
words from the same newspaper. Mr. Dickens had said, 
* Now, the first of these classes proceeded generall}^ on the 
supposition that the compulsory improvement of these 
dwellings, when exceedingly defective, would be very 
expensive. But that was a great mistake, for nothing 
was cheaper than good sanitary improvement, as they 
knew in this case of Jacob's Island, which he had de- 
scribed in a work of fiction some ten or eleven years 
ago.' " The comments which Mr. Dickens made on this 
blunder of the stolid Alderman, who believed that truth, 
when described in fiction, ceases to be truth, are too good 
to be any longer suppressed — as they were, after the death of 
the civic Knight, who had figured, in his life-time, as 
Alderman Cute, in the Christmas story of the The Chimes. 
Here is the reply — badinage charged with satire ; 

When I came to read this, I was so much struck by the 
honesty, by the truth, and by the wisdom of this logic, as 
well as by the fact of the sagacious vestr}^, including mem- 
bers of parliament, magistrates, officers, chemists, and I 
know not who else listening to it meeklj'- (as became them), 
that I resolved to record the fact here, as a certain means 
of making it known to, and causing it to be reverenced by, 
many thousands of people. Reflecting upon this logic, and 
its universal application ; remembering that when Fielding 
described New^gate, the prison immediatel}^ ceased to exist; 
that when Smollett took Roderick Randolph to Bath, that 
city instantly sank into the earth ; that when Scott exercised 
his genius on Whitefriars, it incontinently glided into the 
Thames ; that an ancient place called Windsor was entirely 



90 LIFE OF CnARLES DICKENS. 

destroyed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by two Merry 
Wives of that town, acting under the direction of a person 
of the name of Shakespeare ; and that Mr, Pope, after 
having, at a great expense, completed his grotto at Twicken- 
ham, incautiously reduced it to ashes by writing a poem 
upon it ; — I say, when I came to consider these things, I 
was inclined to make this preface the vehicle of my humble 
tribute of admiration to Sir Peter Laurie. But, I am 
restrained by very painful consideration — by no less a 
consideration than the impossibility of his existence. For 
Sir Peter Laurie having been himself described in a book (as 
I understand he was, one Christmas time, for his conduct 
on the seat of Justice), it is but too clear that there Can be 
no such man 1 

The popularity of Oliver Twist was great from its first 
month, and the work has been repeatedly dramatized. 
Some of these adaptations still keep the stage, wherever the 
English language is spoken. 



CHAPTER YL 

PUBLICATIONS UNAVOWED OR FORGOTTEN. — SUNDAY IN LON- 
DON. — THE POOR men's SUNDAY DINNER. — SKETCHES OP 
YOUNG LADIES AND OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN. — MEMOIRS OF 
GRIMALDI. — THE PIC-NIC PAPERS. — THOMAS MOORE'S PROSE 
AND VERSE. — DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES : THE STRANGE GEN- 
TLEMAN, VILLAGE COQUETTES, IS SHE HIS WIFE ? — AMATEUR 
ACTING. — author's READINGS. 

Only that I have a great objection to what are called 
" hard words," I might properly present what I have to 
place here, between the conclusion of Oliver Twist and the 
beginning of Nicholas Nickleby, as an intercalary chapter. 
It will treat of some of Dickens's productions, unacknowl- 
edged or almost forgotten. 

In 1835, when the late Sir Andrew Agnew, M. P., a Scot- 



AN UNACKNOWLEDGED WORK. 91 

tish baronet, was making considerable stir in and out of 
Parliament, by vehement agitation in favor of rigid laws 
for the better observance of the Sabbath, and bringing no 
small ability, energy, and perseverence to this self-imposed 
duty, one class, among which Charles Dickens was to be 
found, objected to the course he was taking, on the ground 
that the execution of such laws would press lightly upon the 
rich and heavily upon the poor. He was unwilling to see a 
man of station — say Sir Andrew himself — riding to church 
in his own or a hired carriage, and afterwards partaking of 
a dinner, dressed by a French cook, while the omnibus 
within reach of the working man's limited means, was 
not to run on the Sabbath, and the public bakeries were 
to be closed on the same day, so as to prevent his children 
from having the accustomed baked joint and potatoes — per- 
haps their only regular dinner during the week. 

There appeared, therefore, a brochure of some eighty 
pages, written by Dickens, about the time the first number of 
Fichwick was published. It was entitled 

Sunday Under Three Heads : 

as it is : as sabbath bills would make it : 

as it might be made. 

BY 

Timothy Sparks. 

It was illustrated by Hablot K. Browne, whose pseudo- 
nyme was '' Phiz." It was prefaced by a sarcastic dedica- 
tion to the Kight Reverend Father in God, Charles James, 
Lord Bishop of London. It was a strong plea for the poor. 
The description of a lot of children watching their father 
bringing the baked shoulder of mutton, with "taters" 
under it, from the public bakery, is capital. This book was 
a bold prophecy of. Pickwich and subsequent works in 
which the side of the poor was taken. It has long been 
out of print, but a copy of it is preserved in the great 
library of the British Museum, London. 



92 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

It was during the progress of " P ickivick ,''^ I think, that 
two small volumes, also illustrated by " Phiz," made their 
appearance. These, lively and graphic, were " Sketches of 
Young Gentlemen," and '' Sketches of Young Ladies." 
They were so much in Dickens's style, that they were 
attributed to him for a time. They were republished in 
London a few 3'ears ago. 

" Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi," edited by " Boz," was a 
performance b}^ Mr. Dickens when he was conducting 
Bentley^s Miscellany. The introductory chapter is dated 
Februar}', 1838. The subject of this biography was the 
most remarkable theatrical Clown that ever performed in 
an}^ country. His father, Italian by descent and place of 
birth, arrived in London in 1758, during the reign of David 
Garrick at Drury Lane Theatre, and soon was appointed 
ballet-master and buffo-dancer. It was this ingenious 
gentleman, who, during the Riots of 1780, (afterwards so 
graphically described in '' Barnaby Rudge,") when some 
of his terrified neighbors chalked " No Popery " upon their 
doors, to conciliate the furious anti-Catholic mob, wrote 
" No religion at all " upon his, in the expectation, which 
was realized, that all parties would leave him alone ! In 
1779, his son, Joseph Grimaldi, was born, and appeared in 
public, as a miniature Clown, before he was two years old. 
At the age of four he became a regular salaried member 
of the Sadler's Wells Company, and remained in that ca- 
pacity, with the exception of one season, until he closed his 
l^rofessional career, forty-nine years afterwards. He took 
his farewell benefit in June, 1826. He devoted his leisure 
to the composition of his memoirs, and died on the last day 
of May, 1837, — five months after he had completed his last 
chapter. There was an immense quantity of manuscript, 
which was purcliased by Mr. Bentley, who placed it in the 
hands of Mr. Dickens. In the introductory ChajDter, after 
a characteristic dissertation on Pantomimes and Clowns, 
Mr. Dickens says of the memoirs : 



JOSEPH GRIMALDI. 93 

His own share in them is stated in a few words. Bein£^ 
much struck b^^ several incidents in the manuscript — sucli 
as the description of Grimaldi's infancy, the burglar3^, the 
brother's return from sea under the extraordinary circum- 
stances detailed, the adventure of the man with the two fingers 
on his left hand, the account of Mackintosh and his friends, 
and many other passages — and thinking that they might be 
rehated in a more attractive manner (they were at that time 
told in the first person, as if b}^ Grimaldi himself, although 
they had necessarily lost any original manner which his re- 
cital might have imparted to them), he accepted a proposal 
from the publisher to edit the book, and has edited it to the 
best of his ability, altering its form throughout, and ma- 
king such other alterations as he conceived would improve 
the narration of the facts, without any departure from the 
facts themselves. 

There was no book-making in the case. Grimaldi was 
allowed to tell his own story, — to relate the adventures of 
the most eminent Clown the stage ever possessed, and only 
where he had run into garrulity, was the pruning knife ju- 
diciously used. Mr. Dickens said '' the account of Grim- 
aldi's first courtship may appear lengthy in its present form : 
but it has undergone a double and most comprehensive 
process of abridgment. The old man was garrulous upon a 
subject on which the youth had felt so keenly; and as 
the feeling did him honor in both stages of life, the Editor 
lias not had the heart to reduce it further." 

The book, which is pleasant reading, like most theatrical 
biographies, had a portrait of Grimaldi, engraved on steel, 
for its frontispiece, and was further enriched v^ith eight 
original illustrations by George Cruikshank.* 

Mr. John Macrone, publisher of Dickens's Sketches, had 
endeavored to establish himself in business in London, with 
more experience in " the trade " than capital. He befriended 
Charles Dickens on his start into authorship, at a time 

* The memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi are not included in any 
editions of Dickens, English or American, except those published 
by Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia. 

6 



94 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

wlien a young writer most requires encouragement, and, 
though the result proved the correctness of his judgment, 
risked what was a considerable sum, for a 3'Oung publisher, 
in the production of the Sketches, with illustrations by 
Cruikshank. Mr. Macrone died when the success of "The 
Pickwick Papers " was an assured fact. For the benefit of 
his family, Mr. Dickens suggested and undertook to edit 
"The Pic--nic Papers," so called because the two volumes 
were made up from voluntary contributions. He opened 
with a lively sketch, called " The Lamplighter's Story." 
Thomas Moore presented a prose sketch, " The Student 
of Bagdad ; from an unpublished Romance written in 
1809-10:" Talfourd gave a sonnet; Geo. W. Lovell, au- 
thor of " The Provost of Bruges," a poetic tale ; Agnes 
Strickland, a couple of novelettes ; Horace Smith, a me- 
diaeval Spanish story ; Allan Cunningham, a Scotch sketch; 
W, H. Maxwell, an Irish adventure ; W. H. Ainsworth, a 
fragment entitled, " The Old London Merchant; " Mr. John 
Forster, a clever paper on " John Dryden and Jacob 
Ton son." The acting editor of this collection, when his orig- 
inal materials ran short, helped himself out of " Charcoal 
Sketches," by the late Joseph C. Neal, of Philadelphia, to 
the extent of one hundred pages. The end was that Mr. 
Neal, whose name was not even mentioned in the English 
book, claimed his own, and, I believe, received some com- 
pensation. When " The Pic-nic Papers " were republished 
in America,* this portion was omitted. The work was illus- 
trated by George Cruikshank and " Phiz," and realized a 
considerable sura for Mr. Macrone's family. As a literary 
curiosity, I quote a single sentence from Thomas Moore's 
little fragment : 

The sun had just set, and the modest Arabian jasmines, 
which had kept the secret of their fragrance to themselves 
all day, were now beginning to let the sweet mystery out, 
and make every passing breeze their confidant. 

* By Messrs. T. B. Peterson & Brothers, of Philadelphia. 



DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES. 95 

The author stated in a note, that this passage was thus 
versified afterwards in " Lalla Rookh: " 

*' From plants that wake when others sleep ; 
From timid jasmine buds that keep 
Their fragrance to themselves all day, 
But, when the sun-li-ht dies away, 
Let the delicious secret out 
To every breeze that roams about." 

Like the majority of newspaper men, Charles Dickens 
was fond of the stage. On Michaehnas day, 1836, just when 
he had introduced Sam Weller to the public, through the 
Pichicich Papers, commenced six months before, a farce, 
written by him, and entitled " The Strange Gentleman," was 
l)roduced at the St. James's Theatre, on the opening of the 
season. Mr. John Pritt Harley, (now dead,) famous in 
what are called character-parts, was the hero of this piece, 
which was well received and had a fair run. 

It could not have been a failure, as sometimes stated, for, 
at the same theatre, on the evening of Tuesda}', December 
6th, 1836, was produced " Tlie Village Coquettes," an opera 
from his pen, the music of which was composed by Mr. John 
Hullah, also ver}^ young at the time, (he was born in 1812,) 
whose reputation may be said to have been established on 
this occasion. The Era Almanac, a London publication, 
which is authority upon dramatic and musical history, says: 
" The quaint humor, unaffected pathos, and graceful lyrics 
of this production found prompt recognition, and the piece 
enjoyed a prosperous run. ' The Village Coquettes' took 
its title from two village girls, Lucy and Rose, led awa}^ by 
vanity, coquetting with men above them in station, and dis- 
carding their humble though worthy lovers. Before, how- 
ever, it is too late, they see their error, and the piece termi- 
nates happily. Miss Rainforth and Miss Julia Smith, were 
the heroines, and Mr. Bennett and Mr. Gardner were their 
betrothed lovers. Braham was the Lord of the Manor, who 
would have led astray the fair Lucy. There was a capital 
scene where he was detected by Lucy's father, played by 



96 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Strickland, urging an elopement. Harley had a trifling part 
in the piece, rendered iiighly amusing by his admirable 
acting." 

Mr. Hiillah, (who has made a great name as teacher of 
Music for the Million, and is now Professor of Yocal Music 
in King's College and Queen's College, London,) has repeat- 
edly declared that the songs in " The Yiliage Coquettes," 
had a good deal of Sheridan's sprightliness combined with 
the tenderness of Moore's Ij^rics. 

On March 6th, 183T, a third piece by Dickens, called "Is 
She His Wife ; or. Something Singular," was played, also at 
the St. James's Theatre. It was a farce, in which Harley 
pla3^ed the principal character, Felix Tapkins, a flirting 
bachelor, and sang a song in the character of Pickwick, 
** Written expressly for him by Boz." The name of the 
author was not given in the playbill. This was Mr. Dick- 
ens's last dramatic production. 

It has not been claimed for Charles Dickens that he was a 
very successful dramatist. His skill in construction, his 
facility in contriving startling situations — and, above all, 
his wondrous power of making his characters speak and act, 
like living creatures, and not according to the traditions of 
the stage, had scarcely been developed, certainly had not 
been matured, when he wrote two farces and an opera. Per- 
haps, had these been the production of any person but him, 
who was being recognized at the time, as a meteoric light 
on the horizon of letters, their success would have been more 
assured : for the dramatic element abounds in all his works, 
and no other writer has so thoroughly individualized the char- 
acters he created. They were not mere Marionettes, puppets 
moved by an unseen but not unsuspected hand behind the 
scene, but real people. Two or three of his novels were 
dramatized under his own inspection and with his own as- 
sistance, but nearly all of the other adaptations for the stage 
were got up in a hurry and in the most flimsy manner, — a 
collection of scenes, clipped out of the books, wholesale, for 



THE VILLAGE COQUETTES. 01 

the sake of the dialogue. Some wit, unable to resist the 
temptation of putting a quotation from Yirgil into an epi- 
gram, and not unwilling perhaps, to have a sly hit at his late 
colleague in ''the gallery," wrote as folio w»: 

Oh, Dickens, dear, 

I sadly fear 
That great will be our loss 

When we shall say — 

Alas, the day ! — 
^^ Procum hit Jiuiiii Boz.^^ 

Mr. Dickens, who was not a man to be content with a mod- 
erate success, especially at the very turn of the tide, when 
PickiDick was making him surprisingly popular, lost no 
reputation by his dramatic attempts, — which enterprising 
managers might now revive, with great prospect of success. 
For one person who knows anything about Sheridan's School 
for Scandal, five thousand are familiar with the Fickivick Fa- 
'pers and other works by Charles Dickens. His mission was 
to write humanizing tales rather than to waste his genius in 
writing funny plays for comedy-people to make reputation 
and fortune out of — for, at a theatre, we think not of the 
play-wright but the actors. If he were troubled, because his 
novels were more liked than his plays, being better, he might 
have consoled himself with the recollection that Thomas 
Moore, wit and poet, had also written for the stage, and had 
made a great failure, " M. P. ; or, The Blue Stocking," a 
comic opera in three acts, which was produced at the Lyceum 
Theatre in October, 1811, just three months before Dickens 
was born. Moore devoted a long time to the composition 
of this opera, and assisted Horn, the composer, in arranging 
music for the songs. The cast included most of the best 
singers and dramatic performers, but nothing could save a 
piece, which was " comic" only in name. When published it 
did not sell, and was never included in Moore's collected 
works. It is preserved only in Galignani's very scarce edi- 
tion, published in Paris in 1823. Compared with this, 
Dickens's " Village Coquettes" was triumphant indeed. 



98 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENG. 

"The Village Coquettes" was published in 1836, and it 
would be difficult to obtain a copy now. Here, however, is 
t!ie distribution of characters — technically the 
«> 

Deamatis Persons. 

Squire Norton, - Mr. Braham. 

The Hon. Spakins Flam (his friend, ) - - - Mr. Forrester. 
Old Benson ( a small farmer, ) - - Mr. Robert Strickland. 
Mr. Martin Stokes (a very small farmer with a very 

large circle of particular friends, ) - - - - Mr. Harley. 

George Edmunds (betrothed to Lucy, ) - - Mr. Bennett. 

Young Benson, ------- Mr. J. Parry. 

John Madd ox (attached to Rose,) - - - Mr. Gardner. 

Lucy Benson, - - - - - - - Miss Rainforth. 

Rose (her cousin, ) Miss J. Smith. 

There was a notice, that the time occupied in representa- 
tion was two hours and a half, that the period was the autumn 
of 1V29, and that the scene was au English village. There 
was a Dedication, as follows : 

To J. P. Harley, Esq. — My Dear Sir — My dramatic 
bantlings are no sooner born than you father them. You 
have my Strange Gentleman exclusively your own ; you have 
adopted Martin Stokes with equal readiness ; and you still 
jn'ofess your willingness to do the same kind office for all 
future scions of the same stock. 

I dedicate, to you the first play I ever published; and you 
made for me the first play I ever produced : — the balance is 
in your favor, and I am afraid it will remain so. 

That you may long contribute to the amusement of the 
public, and long be spared to shed a lustre, by the honor and 
integrity of your private life, on the profession which for 
many years you have done so much to uphold, is the sincere 
and earnest wish of, my dear sir, yours most faithfully, 

December Ibth, 1836. Charles Dickens. 

In addition, the author tendered his acknowledgment 
to the performers, in this semi-apologetic Preface ; 

Either the honorable gentleman is in the right, or he is 
not, is a phrase in very common use within the walls of 
Parliament. This drama may have a plot, or it may not : 
and the songs may be poetry, or they may not ; and the 
whole affair from beginning to end may be great nonsense, 



I 



WRITING FOR THE STAGE. 99 

or it may not, just as the honorable gentleman or lady who 
reads it ma^^ happen to think. So retaining his own private 
and particular opinion upon the subject (an opinion which 
he formed upwards of a 3ear ago, when he wrote the piece), 
the author leaves every such gentleman or lady to form his 
or hers, as he or she may think proper, without sa3'ing one 
word to influence or conciliate them. 

All he wishes to say is this — that he hopes Mr. Braham 
and all the performers who assisted in the representation of 
this opera will accept his warmest thanks for the interest 
they evinced in it, from its first rehearsal, and for their 
zealous efforts in his behalf — eff"orts which have crowned 
it with a degree of success far exceeding his most sanguine 
anticipations ; and of which no form of words could speak 
his acknowdedgment. 

It is needless to add that the libretto of an opera must 
be, to a certain extent, a mere vehicle for the music ; and 
that it is scarce!}^ fair or reasonable to judge it by those 
strict rules of criticism which would be justly applicable to 
a five-act tragedy or a finished comedj^ 

Independent of other circumstances, including the drama- 
tist's constant terror of not being donejustice to, by actors and 
singers, there were several good reasons why Charles Dick- 
ens should no longer have written for the stage. First, the 
compensation, even for great success, would be compara- 
tively small ; and, next, his time was engrossingly occupied 
by his literary engagements, for he was midway in the Pick- 
wick Papers, and had recently assumed the editorship of 
Bentley^s Miscellany, in which he had commenced the story 
of Oliver Twist. To run a couple of serial novels, besides 
conducting a monthly magazine, was work enough, — even 
for Charles Dickens. Several years after this, when he was 
not so much pressed b}^ hard work, his predilection for the 
drama brought him upon the stage, as the best amateur 
actor of the time, and, still later, led him to gratifj^ the 
public, in both hemispheres, by giving effiective dramatic 
Readings from his own works. 



100 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS, 



CHAPTER YIL 

MARRIAGE. — GEORGE HOGARTH. — A COMPLIMENT FROM LOCK- 
HART. — DICKENS A MAN OF METHOD. THE MISSES HOGARTH. 

— FANNY HOGARTH'S SUDDEN DEATH. — PUBLICATION SUS- 
PENDED. — MR. DICKENS INTERVIEWED. — "YOUNG BOZZES." 

When he was still editor of Bentley^s Miscellany, and 
enjo3'ing fruitage of fame, with a liberal share of the 
substantial results which, in his case, so quickly fell 
into his lap, Charles Dickens was "Benedick the mar- 
ried man." The lady of his choice was a daughter of Mr. 
George Hogarth, a Scottish lawyer who had the rare good for- 
tune of having been the friend and adviser of the two greatest 
writers of x^rose fiction his native and his adopted laud had 
produced — Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. He was 
born in Scotland, in the far-off time, when the " Great Un- 
known " was a puny child; was a writer of the Signet, be- 
fore the present century began ; acted as Scott's confidential 
adviser, lawyer and friend, in the terrible year, 1826, when 
the compound failure of his Edinburgh and London publish- 
ers caused the ruin of the Lord of Abbotsford ; afterwards 
became Charles Dickens's father-in-law ; and died, at a very 
advanced age, only a few months ago. His sister was mar- 
ried to Mr. James Ballantyne, the j^rinter, Scott's life-long 
friend, and on their death, feeling that the ties which con- 
nected him with Scotland were weakened, almost severed, 
he went to London, where, his practical and theoretical 
knowledge of music being great, he wrote several excellent 
works upon the subject. Lockhart, who never went out of 
his way to compliment any author, mentions Mr. Hogarth's 
History of Music as a work " of which all who understand 



PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 101 

that science speak highly." He had not been long in Lon- 
don before he became musical and dramatic critic upon the 
Morniiig Chronicle, upon which paper John Dickens and his 
gifted son were once employed together. When the Daily 
Neivs was established, in the year 1846, Mr. Hogarth was 
placed on its staff as musical critic, and long retained that 
position, his labors ceasing only when he became far too old 
to attend concerts and operas. 

Charles Dickens was quite a young man when he espoused 
Miss Catherina Hogarth, who, according to Shakespeare's 
sensible counsel, was still younger than her mate. 
Almost up to this time Mr. Dickens had continued to reside 
" in chambers," at Furnival's Inn. At the beginning of 
1838, he had taken a step into Respectability, by becoming 
" a housekeeper," renting the house, 48 Dought}^ street, from 
which is dated Nicholas Nicklehy, his next literary work. 
It was a good house, in a respectable and quiet old street, 
east of Rus.^ell Square, and near the Foundling Hospital, 
chiefly inhabited by professional men, in law and medicine. 
His residence there was not of long continuance, for he was 
residing in Devonshire Place, in July, 1840, when Mr. C. ■ 
Lester\Ed wards saw hira. A note to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, 
written after Nicklehy was completed and while Master Hum- 
phrey's Clock was in course of publication, (which note 
shall appear in a subsequent chapter, with other unpublished 
letters in my possession,) is dated " 1 Devonshire Terrace, 
Tuesday, February sixteen, 1841." A later letter to mj^self, 
issued, with more geographical particularity, from " 1 De- 
vonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent's Park, London ; 
First September, 184 2." 

Charles Dickens was a thorough man of method, as well 
as a man of genius, — a notable illustration of the aphorism 
that Genius is only the perfection of Common Sense. Every 
document in his possession, from the commencement of his 
literary career, was duly docketed, dated, and deposited. 
" A place for every thing, and every thing in its place" was 



102 - LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the ruling maxim of his life. I dare say that, among hun- 
dreds, even thousands of letters which he wrote, during his 
five-and-thirty j^ears of literary correspondence, not so 
many as twenty letters v/ere undated. I possess one, 
addressed to Talfourd, in which, though the day of the week 
and of the month are given in full, the year is not set 
down, but, as will be perceived, by and by, in the Chapter 
of his Correspondence, the text of this letter gave a clue to 
the ,year in which it was written. 

Mrs. Charles Dickens had two sisters, younger than 
herself. These were -Ernmjr- and Georgina Hogarth, of 
whom only the latter, of whom all who know her speak 
well, alone survives. She is now over forty 3^ears old, 
and has literally dedicated her life to her brother-in-law's 
family — acting as friend, guide, and guardian ever since 
the unhappy disagreement, in 1858, which deprived them of 
the personal tenderness and care of a mother. A more 
exemplary woman than Miss Hogarth can rarely be found, 
and, believing this, I feel it my duty to say so, in this 
biographical sketch. 

The original Preface to the Pickwick Papers, contained 
this paragraph : " The following pages have been written 
from time to time, almost as the periodical occasion arose. 
Having been written for the most part in the societ}^ of a 
very dear young friend who is now no more, they are con- 
nected in the author's mind at once with the happiest 
period of his life, and with its saddest and most severe 
affliction." 

This refers to a melancholy event. Mr. Dickens was 
sitting after dinner, with his wife, her two sisters, Mr. 
John Forster, and Daniel Maclise, the artist. Miss F-am>y 
Hogarth, w^ho w^as older than her sister Georgina, was 
engaged to Maclise. The whole part}" were on the point 
of going to the theatre, to see Macready perform. Sud- 
denly, Miss ■J'afiBy Hogarth fell back in her chair, and 
died, almost instantly, of heart disease. This heavy and 



INTERVIEWING BOZ. 103 

unexpected blow had sucli an effect upon Dickens, that the 
publication of the serial -which he was then writing was 
suspended for a month, public notice being given that this 
was caused by a severe domestic affliction, which had 
totally prostrated the author for a time. 

Having already shown how even before he had appeared 
as author of a substantive work, Charles Dickens had been 
" interviewed" by Mr. N. P. Willis, it ma}^ not be out of 
place, here, to exhibit him, through another American' 
medium, while yet the bloom of young success — its pur- 
Ijurea juventus — was his. 

Mr. Charles Edwards Lester, subsequently U. S. Consul 
in Genoa, saw Mr. Dickens, in London, in Jul}^, 1840, and 
an account of his visit, in two volumes, of his experiences 
in England, was published, after his return home. Mr. 
Lester went to Devonshire Place, where Dickens then resided ; 
pencilled a request, on his card, that he would see an Ameri- 
can ; was admitted into his librarj^, and found him with a 
sheet of "Master Humphrey's Clock" before him. The 
great author, though disturbed by a curious stranger, was 
gentle and courteous, and expressed his gratitude for the 
favorable opinion of him entertained by American readers 
and critics. Mr. Lester then proceeds : 

I inquired if, in portraying his characters, he had not, in 
every instance, his eye upon some particular person he had 
known, since I could not conceive it possible for an author 
to present such graphic and natural pictures except from 
real life. ''Allow me to ask, sir," I said, "if the one-eyed 
Squeers, coarse but good John Browdie, the beautiful Sally 
Brass, clever Dick Swiveller, the demoniac and intriguing 
Quilp, the good Cheerj^ble Brothers, the avaricious Eagin, 
and dear little Nelly, are mere fancies ?" 

"No, sir, they are not," he replied; " thej^ are copies. 
You will not understand me to sa}^ of course, that the}^ are 
true histories in all respects, but they are real likenesses; 
nor have I in any of my works attempted anj'^thing more 
than to arrange my story as well as I could, and give a true 
picture of scenes 1 have witnessed. My past history and 



104 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKENS. 

pursuits have led me to a familiar acquaintance with numer- 
ous instances of extreme wretchedness and of deep-laid 
villany. In the haunts of squalid poverty I have found 
many a broken heart too good for this world. Many such 
persons, now in the most abject condition, have seen better 
days. Once they moved in circles of friendship and afflu- 
ence, from which they have been hurled by misfortune to 
the lowest depth of want and sorrow. This class of persons 
is very large. 

" Then there are thousands in our parish workhouses and 
in the lanes of London, born into the world without a friend 
except God and a dying mother. Many, too, who in circum- 
stances of trial have yielded to impulses of passion, and by 
one fatal step fallen beyond recovery. London is crowded, 
and, indeed, so is all England, with the poor, the unfortu- 
nate, and the guilty. This description of persons has been 
generally overlooked by authors. They have had none to care 
for them, and have fled from the public gaze to some dark 
habitation of this great city, to curse the cold charities of a 
selfish world, and die. There are more broken hearts in 
London than in any other place in the world. The amount 
of crime, starvation, nakedness, and misery of every sort in 
the metropolis surpasses all calculation. I thought I could 
render some service to humanity by bringing these scenes 
before the minds of those who, from never having witnessed 
them, suppose they cannot exist. In this eff'ort I have not 
been wholly unsuccessful ; and there is nothing makes me 
happier than to think that, b}^ some of my representations, 
I have increased the stock of human cheerfulness, and, by 
others, the stock of human sympathy. I think it makes 
the heart better to seek out the suffipj-ing and relieve them. 
I have spent many days and nights in the most wretched 
districts of the metropolis, studying the history of the human 
heart. There we must go to find it. In high circles we see 
everything but the heart, and learn everj' thing but the real 
character. We must go to the hovels of the poor and the 
unfortunate, where trial brings out the character, I have in 
these rambles seen many exhibitions of generous affection 
and heroic endurance, which would do honor to any sphere. 
Often have I discovered minds that only wanted a little of the 
sunshine of prosperity to develop the choicest endowments 
of Heaven. I think I never returned to my home after these 
adventures without being made a sadder and a better man. In 
describing these characters I aim no higher than to feel in 



YOUNG BOZZES. 105 

' writing as they seem to feel themselves. I am persuaded 
that I have succeeded just in proportion as I have cultivated 
a familiarity with the trials and sorrows of the poor, and 
told their story as they would have related it themselves." 

I spoke of the immense popularity of his works, and re- 
marked that I believed he had ten readers in America where 
he had one in England. 

" Why, sir, the popularity of my works has surprised me. 
For some reason or other, I believe the^^ are somewhat ex- 
tensively read ; nor is it the least gratifying circumstance 
to me, that they have been so favorably received in your 
countr3^ I am trj'ing to enjoy my fame while it lasts, for I 
believe I am not so vain as to suppose that my books will 
be read by any but the men of m}^ own times." 

I remarked that he might consider himself alone in that 
opinion, and, it would probably be no easy matter to make 
the world coincide with him. He answered with a smile, " I 
shall probably not make any very serious efforts to do it I" 

Looking through the library windows into a garden, Mr. 
L. saw " several rosy-cheeked children plajing by a water 
fountain," and adds, " as the little creatures cast occasional 
glances up to us while we were watching their sports from 
the window, I thought I saw in their large, clear, blue e^'es, 
golden hair, and bewitching smiles, the image of Charles 
Dickens. They were, in fact, young Bozzes." As it hap- 
pened, they were not — seeing that in July, 1840, Dickens 
had not been three years married. 

Mr. Lester wound up with the following rose-colored j^en- 
portrait of his hero ; 

I think Dickens incomparably the finest-looking man I 
ever saw. The portrait of him in the Philadelphia edition 
of his works is a good one ; but no picture can do justice to 
his expression when he is engaged in an interesting conver- 
sation. There is something^^bout his eyes at such times 
which cannot be_copie^X"^^persbirTre"^^ 
P^liHovFWeTtancrarHneig^^ but his bearing is noble, and he 
appears taller than he really is. His figure is very graceful, 
neither too slight nor too stout. The face is handsome. • 
i His complexion is delicate — rather pale generally ; but l 
\ when his feelings are kindled his countenance is overspread ^ 



106 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

with a rich glow. I presume he is somewhat vain of his 
hair, and he can be pardoned for it too. It reminded me 
of words in Sidney's Arcadia : "His fair auburn hair, which 
he wore in great length, gave him at that time a most de- 
lightful show." His forehead, a phrenologist would say 
(especially if he knew his character beforehand), indicates 
a clear and beautiful iutellect, in which the organs of per- 
ception, mirthfulness, idealitj^ and comparison, predominate. 
I should think his nose had once been almost determined to 
be Roman, but hesitated just long enough to settle into the 
classic Grecian outline. 

But the charm of his person is in his full, soft, beaming 
ej^es, which catch an expression from every passing object ; 
and you can alwa3^s see wit, half sleeping in ambush around 
them, when it is not shooting its wonted fires. Dickens has 
almost made us feel that 

" Wit is the pupil of the soul's clear eye, 
And in man's world, the only shining star." 

And yet I think his conversation, except in perfect abandon 
among his friends, presents but few striking exhibitions of 
wit Still there is a rich vein of humor and good feeling in 
all he says. 

I passed two hours at his house, and when T left was more 
impressed than ever with the goodness of his heart. I 
should mention that during my visit I handed him Camp- 
bell's letter: it produced not the slightest change in hi§ 
manner. I expressed, on leaving, the hope that little Nelly 
(in whose fate I confessed I felt a deeper interest than in 
that of most real characters) might, after all her wanderings, 
find a quiet and happy home. " The same hope," he replied, 
"has been expressed to me by others; and I hardly know 
what to do. But if you ever hear of her death in a future 
number of the Clock, you shall say that she died as she 
lived." 

The portrait above referred to, was that engraved from 
the picture by Daniel Maclise, and will be remembered as 
the first authentic likeness of the young novelist then pub- 
lished. Mr. Lester, fairly excited, at last winds up with 
*' Mr. Dickens is certainly one of the most lovely men I ever 
saw. " — But that was thirty years ago, and was scarcel}^ consid- 



PREPARING FOR NICKLEBY. 101 

erecl as sa3'ing too much, at the time, when little was known 
about the literary phenomenon, whose writings, popular as 
the}^ were in his own country, were far more extensively 
read and prized in this Western empire, Mr. Lester's ac- 
count of Dickens was very largely circulated, and prepared 
the American mind for the visit which he i^aid his trans- 
atlantic friends, a little later. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

RETIRES FROM BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. — RETROSPECT. — 
YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS. — PICKS UP JOHN EROWDIE AND 

WACKFORD SQUEERS. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. DOTHEBOYS 

HALL. — THE CRUMMLES PARTY. — CHEERYBLE BROTHERS. 

CHANGE OP PLOT. — AUTHORSHIP AVOWED. — PORTRAIT BY 
MACLISE.^-NICKLEBY ON THE PARISIAN STAGE, — MR. 

THACKERAY AND JULES JANIN CONTINUATION OF 

NICKLEBY. — TROOPS OF FRIENDS. 

We have now to go back a little. Fairly liberated 
from the great labor, however well paid, of editing, for 
he had retired from Bentley^s 31iscellany, at the close 
of 1838, with a genial valedictory abo,ut the old 
coachman introducing his successor, Mr. William Har- 
rison Ainsworth, to its readers, Charles Dickens had 
leisure, at last, to devote his whole time and ability to 
the composition of a regularly constructed story. The 
Sketches, as their title implied, were odds and ends, forming 
a work of "shreds and patches." Pickwick, which had 
assailed imprisonment for debt as well as exposed the 
license of legal practitioners in English Courts of law, was 
begun without a plan, and had no plot ; Oliver Twist, be- 
gun with the avowed object of exposing the mismanagement 
and inhumanity of the parish work-house system, soon 



108 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

abandoned that purpose, and took the boy to London, 
among the thieves. The new author had been exceedingly 
well received. Passages from his writings were upon men's 
lips, and Sam Weller had become a member of the great 
famil}'- of fiction. We knew everj'body, in Pichwick and in 
Oliver Twist, as well as if we had constantly met them, in or 
out of society. It was almost universally admitted that a 
genius of uncommon brilliancy had arisen, and his next 
work was looked for with great expectation, particularly by 
a few who hinted that " the young man, a farceur at best, 
had written himself out." He was not a farceur, and so 
far from being exhausted, had over thirty years of great and 
successful work before him. 

He took pains to prepare himself for another work, and 
the result was an onslaught upon the cheap Yorkshire 
schools, which were a crying shame and a detestable 
nuisance at that time. Mr. Wackford Squeers's advertise- 
ment of Dotheboys Hall, in the third chapter of Nicholas 
Nickleby, was scarcely a caricature thirty years ago. I 
have read scores of similar announcements in the Liverpool, 
Leeds, and Manchester papers, at Christmas and mid- 
summer. 

Mr. Dickens knew ver}'- little of Yorkshire schools, when 
he made up his mind to write about them. His own account 
is that, when himself a school-boy, he had "heard" of them. 
" My first impressions of them," he said, " were picked up 
at that time, and that they were, somehow or other, con- 
nected with a suppurated abscess that some boy had come 
home with, in consequence of his Yorkshire guide, philoso- 
pher, and friend, having ripped it open with an inky pen- 
knife. The impression made upon me, however made, never 
left me. I was alwaj's curious about them — fell, long after- 
wards, and at sundry times, into the way of hearing more 
about them — at last, having an audience, I resolved to 
write about them." 

Whenever Lord Macaulay, writing history or criticism, 



YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS. 109 

enconntered a fact Tvhich lie did not understand, or a date 
wliicii he suspected, lie would travel a hundred miles to verify 
or reject either. Scott had a good deal of the same tendency 
even in novel- writing. When he was writing Quentin Diir- 
ward, with the scene in a part of France which he had 
never visited, he availed himself of the livelj^ and accurate 
journal of a friend, who had lately traversed the district, 
and being as much artist as author, had executed a vast 
variety of clever drawings, representing landscapes and 
ancient buildings. But Scott wanted to describe the place 
where Louis XI. lived — and his letters to Constable, his 
publisher, are characteristic. " It is a vile place," he wrote, 
" this village of Plessis les Tours, that can bafile both j^ou 
and me. It is a place famous in history ; and moreover, as 
your Gazetteer assures us, is a village of a thousand inhabi- 
tants, yet I have not found it on any map, provincial or 
general, which I have consulted," and half in despair, 
he went on to suggest, that something about it jnust be 
found in Malte Brun's Geographical Works, or that 
Wraxall's History of France, or his Travels, might mention 
it. Finally he discovered that the place was on the banks 
of the Cher, a tributary of the Loire, and the readers of the 
romance, the first of the Waverley Novels which had its 
scene in France, may remember how well acquainted with 
the place, about which he despaired of learning anything, he 
has made them. 

Mr. Dickens was as conscientious and as painstaking as 
Macaulay and Scott. He could have drawn upon his 
imagination for a description of the- Yorkshire cheap school 
system, the cruelties of which, from vague reports, had long 
grieved and vexed him, but he preferred to write about 
what he knew. Therefore, at the beginning of 1839, he went 
down to Yorkshire, to judge for himself how much truth 
there was in the rumors which had reached him. In the 
extended preface, to the People's edition of his Works, he 
related what he had done ; prefacing it with the remark 



110 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKEITS. 

that when the story was begun, there were a good many 
cheap Yorkshire schools in existence, and significantly 
adding " there are very few now." His object was to write 
about them, if he found that he ought to do so. He says : 

With that intent, I went down into Yorkshire before I 
began this book, in very severe w^inter-time which is pretty 
faithfully described herein. As I wanted to see a school- 
master or two, and was forewarned that those gentlemen 
might, in their modesty, be shy of receiving a visit from me, 
I consulted with a professional friend here, who had a York- 
shire connection, and with whom I concerted a pious fraud. 
He gave me some letters of introduction, in the name, I 
think, of my travelling companion ; they bore reference to. a 
suppositious little boy who had been left with a widowed 
mother who didn't know what to do with him ; the poor lady 
had thought, as a means of thawing the tardy compassion 
of her relations in his behalf, of sending him to a York- 
shire school ; I was the poor lady's friend, travelling that 
way ; and if the recipient of the letter could inform me of a 
school in his neighborhood, the writer would be very much 
obliged. 

I went to several places in that part of the country where 
I understood these schools to be plentifully sprinkled, and 
had no occasion to deliver a letter until I came to a certain 
town which shall be nameless. The person to whom it was 
addressed, was not at home ; but, he came down at night, 
through the snow, to the inn where I was staying. It was 
after dinner ; and he needed little persuasion to sit down by 
the fire in a warm corner, and take his share of the wine 
that was on the table, 

I am afraid he is dead now. I recollect he was a jovial, 
rudd}^ broad-faced man ; that we got acquainted directly ; 
and that we talked on all kinds of subjects, except the school, 
which he showed a great anxiety to avoid. " Was there any 
large school near?" I asked him in reference to the letter. 
"Oh yes," he said; "there was a pratty big'un." "Was 
it a good one ?" I asked. " Ey !" he said, " it was as good 
as anoother ; that was a' a raatther of opinion ;" and fell to 
looking at the fire, staring round the room, and whistling a 
little. On my reverting to some other topic that we had 
been discussing, he recovered immediately^ ; but, though I 
tried him again and again, I never approached the question 



JOHN BROWDIE AND SQUEERS. HI ^ 

of the school, even if he were in the middle of a laugh, 
without observing that his countenance fell, and that he 
became uncomfortable. At last, when we had passed a 
couple of hoars or so, agreeably, he suddenly took up his 
hat, and leaning over the table and looking me full in the 
face, said, in a low voice : " Weel, Misther, we've been very 
pleasant toogather, and ar'U spak' my moind tiv'ee. Dinnot 
let the weedur send her lattle boy to yan o* our school- 
measthers, while there's a harse to hoold in a' Luunun, or a 
gootther to lie asleep in. Ar wouldn't mak' ill words amang 
my neeburs, and ar speak tiv'ee quiet loike. But I'm dom'd 
if ar can gang to bed and not tellee, for weedur 's sak', to 
keep the lattle boy from a 'sike scoondrels while there's a 
harse to hoold in a' Lunnun, or a gootther to lie asleep in 1" 
Repeating these words with great heartiness, and with a 
solemnity on his jolly face that made it look twice as large 
as before, he shook hands and went away. I never saw him 
afterwards, but I sometimes imagine that I descry a faint 
reflection of him in John Browdie. 

John Browdie is a real personage, and it has been 
suspected that Wackford Squeers must also have been en- 
countered in that cold visit. There is an army of these 
schoolmasters in that district, and several of those, though 
they had the regular number of eyes, insisted that 
Dickens must have drawn the portrait of each— just as a 
learned Professor lately took the trouble of proclaiming on the 
house-top that he, and none else, must have been the " social 
parasite " sketched in Mr. Disraeli's last novel. But Mr. 
Dickens drew from a class and not from individuals. He says, 
" Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class, and not of an 
individual. Where imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupid- 
ity, are the stock in trade of a small body of men, and 
one is described by these characteristics, all his fellows 
will recognize something belonging to themselves, and 
each will have a misgiving that the portrait is his own." 
He added the emphatic declaration that " his object in 
calling public attention to the system would be very imper- 
fectly fulfilled, if he did not state now in his own person, em- 



112 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

phatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school 
are faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality, pur- 
posely subdued and kept down lest they should be deemed 
impossible — that there are upon record trials at law in 
which damages have been sought as a poor recompense 
for lasting agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon chil- 
dren by the treatment of the master in these places, 
involving such offensive and foul details of neglect, cruelty, 
and disease, as no writer of fiction would have the bold- 
ness to imagine — and that, since he has been engaged 
upon these Adventures, he has received from private quar- 
ters far beyond the reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts 
of atrocities, in the perpetration of which upon neglected 
or repudiated children these schools have been the main 
instruments, very far exceeding any that appear in these 
pages." 

In Nicholas Nickelhy, he had the advantage of breaking 
up new ground. Here was a system full of abuses, equally 
injurious to body and mind, which no writer, whether of 
fact or fiction, had attempted to expose. In the public 
journals, liberal education and good treatment were freely 
promised to pupils, — or, to use the words in Mr. Squeers's 
own card, " Youth were boarded, clothed, booked, furnished 
with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed 
in all languages — living and dead," and so on, for twenty 
guineas a year. Any one could see that to fulfil this com- 
pact was impossible, yet many poor children, offspring of mis- 
fortune or vice, were exiled to such schools^ often with a 
hope, perhaps, that they never were to return. They 
were the devoted victims of cupidity, ignorance, and bru- 
tality. American readers cannot realize the extent and 
enormity of this foul system, because it would not be 
allowed to exist, even for a day, in any part of their country, 
which, humane and liberal in all things, is especially so in 
the treatment and education of youth. 

There was Hogarthian humor, with Hogarth's truth, too, 



NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 113 

in the exhibition, not onh^ of the scholastic but the domestic 
menage at Dotheboys Kail. Miss Fanny's flirtations came 
out in pleasant relief with the weekl}^ doses of brimstone 
and treacle, while the story of poor Smike was told with a 
tenderness and pathos that went to the heart at once. 
There were varieties of character, in this tale ; — and giving 
precedence, in courtesy if not of right, to the fair sex, we 
may mention Mrs. Nickleby, the very queen of garrulous, 
tiresome, good-hearted, soft-headed, and ridiculous English 
matrons ; little Miss La Creevy ; Mrs. John Browdie, 
Fann}' Squeers, the severe mistress of Dotheboys Hall, and 
the theatrical ladies, from Mrs. Yincent Crummies and the 
Phenomenon, down to Henrietta Petowker and indispensable 
Mrs. Grudden. Here it ma}' be mentioned, parentheticallj'", 
but not in a parenthesis, (to which some of my readers have 
occasionally objected,) that the scenes in the theatre at 
Portsmouth, in which the Crummles's company very promi- 
nently appear, are full of reality and true humor. They 
could only have been written by one who had been a great 
deal behind the curtain. 

Nicholas Nicklebj'', the hero of the story, is an ordinary 
young gentleman, v^^hom the author's own statement best 
characterizes: — "If Nicholas be not alvva3's found to be 
blameless or agreeable, he is not always intended to appear 
so. He is a 3'oung man of an impetuous temper and of little 
or no experience ; and I saw no reason whj^ such a hero 
should be lifted out of nature." Ralph, the uncle, is the 
villain of the romance. His vile death is in accord with 
his bad life. Contrasted with him are the Cheeryble 
Brothers, drawn from life, (or rather from a second-hand 
description, seeing that Mr. Dickens never interchanged a 
word with either,) and it may be said that Tim Linkinwater 
is worthy of them. Newman Noggs, the Marplot in the 
dark drama of his master's ill doing, is an almost impossible 
eccentric. John Browdie and Linkinwater, with their honest, 
truthful nature, add flavor to the narrative. The compact 



lU LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

between Gride, Ralph, and Bray ; the Sliderskew-episodc ; 
the adventures of Mr. Lillj^vick, Miss Petowker, and the 
Ken wigs familj^ are rather blemishes on the work. But the 
life and death of Smike are wonderfully touching and true. 
There is not so much pure fun in Nicklehy as overflowed in 
Pickwick, but the more earnest purpose is felt, and gives a 
higher tone to the story. 

Nicklehy was completed in 1840. The conclusion, critical 
readers will notice, is scarcely in accordance with what the 
incidents had evidently led up to. Mr. Moncrieff, who had 
dramatized Pierce Egan's " Tom and Jerry," twenty years 
before, and was ever on the look-out for novels which he 
could ''adapt" for the stage, had laid his predatory 
hands upon Nicklehy before it was three-fourths written, 
and, framing a finale of his own, had sold it, as " a drama," 
to the manager of one of the inferior London theatres. The 
denouejnent which he had contrived forced Dickens to make 
a new conclusion of the story. Perhaps to this we owe the 
rather impossible incident of Smike being finally presented 
as Ralph Nicldeby's son. The last appearance of Manta- 
lini, in a cellar, turning a mangle for a truculent Irish 
washerwoman, is unnatural, and out of keeping with the 
narrative. It may be objected, too, that no schoolmaster, 
least of all Squeers, would have given such a suggestive title 
as Dothebo3^s Hall to his residence. The old dramatists 
were addicted to it, but modern tastes does not sanction the 
giving surnames which indicate character. It is true that 
Sheridan has Sir Anthony Absolute, as a very positive 
father; Sir Lucius 'Trigger, as a professioned duellist; 
aud Mrs. Malaprop, as a conversational blunderer, in 
" The Rivals ; " while among the satirical coterie of " The 
School for Scandal," are persons called Backbite, Sneerwell, 
Candor, and Crabtree. On or off the stage this sort of 
nomenclature is now rarely used. Lord Frederick Veri- 
sopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk, the pigeon and the rook — 
may be considered as having names a trifle too suggestive. 



NICKLEBY IN PARIS. 115 

Nicholas Nicklehy when completed, like Pickwick, in a 
guinea volume, appeared with the author's name, and an 
engraving on steel, from his portrait by Daniel Maclise, the 
great painter. A fac simile of his very peculiar autograph 
was also given. This is the portrait in which Mr. Dickens 
is represented with long hair and little whisker. It hung, 
in the diuing-room in Gad's Hill Bouse, where its original 
was death-smitten, and was ordered for sale with his other 
pictures, on Jul}^ 9th,^in London. 

In Fraser^s Magazine, for March, 1842, Mr. Thackeray 
gave an account, in a free and easy manner, with a few of 
his own peculiar pen-and-ink drawings, of the production 
of " Nicholas Nickleby, ou les Voleurs de Londres," at the 
Ambigu-Comique Theatre, on the Boulevard, in Paris, and 
of a ferocious criticism upon the piece by Jules Janin, — who 
considered play and story as the productions of " Monseiur 
Dickens." Previously, however, Mr. Thackera^^ had seen 
Nicklehy played at the Adelphi Theatre in Loudon, with 
Mrs. Keeley as Smike, Mr. Yates as Mantalini, and Mr. 
Wilkinson as Squeers. The French version took many amu- 
sing liberties with the original, and opened with the " Para- 
dis desEnfans," — the romantic Parisian name for Dotheboys 
Hall. Neekolass Neeklbee, usher in this seminary, is giving 
a lesson to the young and lovely daughter of the Earl of 
Clarendon, whose estate is adjacent. Neekolass is represented 
as nephew of a rich London banker, who provided for him 
by getting him this usher's place, with about twenty-two 
dollars per annum. John Browdie is there, and so is Smeek, 
and the first act closes with Neeklbee's flogging Monsieur 
Squarrs, the schoolmaster, and going away, accompanied by 
Smeek. They go to London, where, being utterly pennjdess, 
they stop at a first-class hotel, which Browdie, old Ralph 
and the Earl of Clarendon frequent. On the death of this 
nobleman, who must not be confounded with a late Foreign 
Minister of England, Smeek turns out to be successor to the 
coronet and estates, makes Kate Neeklbee his countess, and 



IIG LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

bestows the hand of his sister, the lady Annahella, upon 
Neekolass, whose pupil she had been when he was usher at 
Dothebo3'S Hall. A new incident in the story is the intro- 
duction of a gang of thieves, of whom Ralph and Squeers 
are commanders, whose place of rendezvous, Codger's Hall, 
is a great gothic hall, hidden a thousand feet below the 
Thames ! 

The French dramatists, it will be seen, deviated a good deal 
from the original story. Jules Janin — famous critic, tlien and 
now ! — wrote an article, in the Journal des Dehats, in which 
he assailed the play, as if Dickens himself had written it, 
and branded him as an immodest writer ! Now, immodesty 
was the very last offence with which Dickens could honestly 
be charged, at an}^ time ; while, unfortunately, it cropped 
out, rather luxuriantly, in the contemporary compositions 
of his critic. 

Long before " Nickleby " was completed, some unscru- 
pulous and impudent scribbler brought out in penny weekly 
numbers, a new version of what he called *' The Nickleby 
Papers, by Poz." The}^ were stupid to a degree, but the low 
price was in their favor, and the}^ had a large sale. On tlie 
completion of " Nickleby," a continuation, also by " Poz," 
was published. The narrative began ten years after the 
close of the real story, and reintroduced Squeers, who had 
served out his seven years' transportation to Botany Bay. 
He had not improved there, and naturally took to burglary 
and forgery on his return to London. He was shot, if I re- 
member correctly, while engaged in an attempt to break 
into the dwelling house of Nicholas Nickleby in Devonshire. 
Nothing could have been more clumsily written, but the book 
had thousands .of readers — among the non-respectables in 
London. 

The intimation that " Boz " was the handsome 3^oung 
gentleman whose portrait was a frontispiece to Ni^'liolas 
Nickleby, was information to the public, though man}^ of 
them suspected that "Dickens" itself was only a nom de 



MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK, lit 

plume. In London, however, while Pickwich was in pro- 
gress, and after Mr. Dickens had become editor of Bentley^s 
Miscellany, his identity was generally known, not in literary 
society only, but in the most fashionable and aristocratic 
circles. It would have been no wonder if the young author's 
head had been turned by the prestige which he had gained, 
and the adulation which was given to him, from all quarters. 
London society, usually so cold and stand-off, threw open 
its portals for him, and it is no exaggeration to say that, 
from the conclusion of Pichioick to the close of his life, 
Charles Dickens was as warmly greeted and as kindly esti- 
mated there as, in his time, Scott had been. It was singular 
that the annalist, the champion of the poor and humble, 
should always have been the enfant clieri of the rich and 
might}^ and gladly' received by them on terms of complete 
equality. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. — ITS PROPOSED OBJECT. — ILLUS- 
TRATIONS. — THE WORKS. author's CONFESSION. MR. 

PlCKWrcK AND THE WELLERS REVIVED, THE PRECOCIOUS 

GRANDSON. — OLD CUSIOSITY SHOP. — LITTLE NELL. — THOMAS 
HOOD. — BARNABY RUDGE. — RIOTS OP LONDON. — THE RAVEN. 

LORD JEFFREY. DINNER AT EDINBURGH. — CHRISTOPHER 

NORTH, — PUBLIC SPEAKING. 

On the completion of Nicholas Nicklehy, its author, full of 
the energy of youth excited hy success, resolved to caiuy 
into execution a project which, with novelty to recommend 
it, he thought might elevate him still higher in public favor. 
In the Preface to the revised edition of his works, he says : 
" In April, 1840, I issued the first number of a new weekly 
publication, price three pence, called Maste7^ Humphrey's 
Clock. It was intended to consist, for the most part, of 



118 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

detached papers, but was to include one continuous story, 
to be resumed from time to time, with such indefinite inter- 
vals between each period of resumption as might best ac- 
cord with the exigencies and capabilities of the proposed 
Miscellany. The original Preface, dated September, 1840, 
sa^'s ; 

When the author commenced this Work, he proposed to 
himself three objects : 

First. To establish a periodical, which should enable 
him to present, under one general head, and not as separate 
and distinct publications, certain fictions which he had it in 
contemplation to write. 

Secondly. To produce these Tales in w^eekly numbers ; 
hoping that to shorten the intervals of communication be- 
tween himself and his readers, would be to knit more closely 
the pleasant relations thej had held for Fort}'' Months. 

Thirdly. In the execution of this weekly task, to have as 
much regard as its exigencies would permit, to each story as 
a whole, and to the possibility of its publication at some 
distant day, apart from the machinery in which it had its 
origin. 

The characters of Master Humphrey and his three friends, 
and the little fancy of the Clock, were the result of these 
considerations. When he sought to interest his readers in 
those who talked, and read, and listened, he revived Mr. 
Pickwick and his humble friends ; not with any intention 
of reopening an exhausted and abandoned mine, but to con- 
nect them in the thoughts of those whose favorites they had 
been, with the tranquil enjoyments of Master Humphrey. 

It was never the author's intention to make the Members 
of Master Humphrey's Clock, active agents in the stories 
they are supposed to relate. Having brought himself in 
the commencement of his undertaking to feel an interest in 
these quiet creatures, and to imagine them in their old cham- 
ber of meeting, eager listeners to all he had to tell, the author 
hoped — as authors will — to succeed in awakening some of 
his own emotions in the bosoms of his readers. Imagining 
Master Humphrey in his chimne3"-corner, resuming, night 
after night, the narrative, — say, of the Old Curiosity Shop 
— picturing to himself the various sensations of his hearers 
— thinking how Jack Redburn might incline to poor Kit, 



MASTER HUMPHREY. 119 

and perhaps lean too favorably even towards the lighter 
vices of Mr. Richard Swiveller— how the deaf gentleman 
would have his favorite, and Mr. Miles his— and how all 
these gentle spirits would trace some faint reflection of their 
past lives in the varjdng current of the tale — he has insensi- 
bly fallen into the belief that the}^ are present to his readers 
as they are to him, and has forgotten that like one whose 
vision is disordered he may be conjuring up bright figures 
where there is nothing but empty space. 

The short papers which are to be found at the beginning 
of this volume were indispensable to the form of publica- 
tion and the limited extent of each number, as no story of 
lengthened interest could be begun until " The Clock " was 
wound up and fairly going. 

The work was of large octavo size, beautifull}^ printed 
upon fine paper, and was principally illustrated by H. K. 
Browne and George Cattermole. The former of these was 
the artist of Sunday in London, Pickioick, and Nicklehy ; 
the latter was famous for his charming interiors and 
architectural designs, as well as for his figure drawings, 
several of which add much to the interest of The 
Old Curiosity Shop and Barnahy Budge, Geoi'ge Cruik- 
shauk and Daniel Maclise each contributed one sketch. 
The engravings, on wood, were printed with the text, 
instead, as before, of being etched on steel and printed sep- 
aratel}^ 

Master Humphrey's Clock was fashioned somewhat on 
the plan of the Spectator, Tattler, and Guardian, which, more 
than a century before, Addison, Steele and Swift had com- 
posed and published. The framework was written with 
great care, in its author's best manner. Master Humphrey, 
self-introduced to the reader, was an amiable old man, living 
in retirement "in a venerable suburb of London, in an old 
house, which in bygone days was a famous resort for merry 
roysterers and peerless ladies, long since departed." He is 
almost a recluse, "a misshapen, deformed old man," but 
neither churlish or cold ; fond of children and beloved b}^ 
ihem. He has a great liking for his Clock, which has stood 



120 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

upon the staircase at home, nigh sixty years ago, and is a 
quaint old thing, in a huge oaken case, curiously and richly 
carved. It sets the time for the neighborhood, and the bar- 
ber "would sooner believe it than the Sun." By degrees, 
Master Humphrey has made a few choice friends — to wit : 
a deaf gentleman, of whose name he is ignorant ; a kind- 
hearted old librarian and factotum, named Jack Redburn ; 
and one Mr. Miles, a retired merchant, who places implicit 
faith in Redbnrn's capabilities. 

" We are men of secluded habits," Master Humphre}" sa3's, 
" with something of a cloud upon our early fortunes, whose 
enthusiasm nevertheless has not cooled with age, wliose 
spirit of romance is not 3'et quenched, who are content 
to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather 
than ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alche- 
mists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from 
dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy 
forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb 
of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least 
regarded matter that passes through our crucible. Spirits 
of past times, creatures of imagination, and people of to-day, 
are alike the objects of our seeking, and, unlike the objects 
of search with most philosophers, we can ensure their com- 
ing at our command." 

These four meet, once a week, in a quaint old room, where 
were six chairs, and have determined to fill the empty ones 
whenever they find two men to their mind. In the Clock- 
case, beneath where the steady pendulum throbs and beats 
with healthy action, these friends have deposited files of 
dustj^ papers, which they read at their weekly meetings. 

These are of various kinds : — for example, the Giant 
Chronicles, related by Gog and Magog, the pride of Guild- 
hall, London ; a Murderer's Confession ; a story written 
by Mr. Pickwick ; a little imaginarj^ correspondence ; and 
at last, The Old GariosiUj Shop, which has the sub-title of 
Personal Adventures of Master Humphrey. Of this Mr. 
Dickens tells us : 



OLD WELLEP.. 121 

The first chapter of this tale appeared in the fourth num- 
ber of Master Humphrey's Clock, when I had already been 
made uneasy by the desultory character of that work, and 
■when, I believe, my readers had thoroughly participated in 
the feeling. The commencement of a story vvas a great 
satisfaction to me, and I had reasons to believe that n^y 
readers participated in this feeling too. Hence, being 
pledged to some interruptions and some pursuit of tlie 
original design, I cheerfully set about disentangling m3'self 
from those impediments as fast as I could ; and — that done 
— from that time until its completion, The Old Guriosift/ 
Shop was written and published from week to week, in 
weekly parts. 

When the story was finished, in order that it might be 
freed from the incumbrance of associations and interrup- 
tions with which it had no kind of concern, I caused the few 
sheets of Master Humphrey's Clock, which had been 
printed in connection with it, to be cancelled ; and, like the 
unfinished tale of the w4ndy night and the notary in the 
Sentimental Journe}^ they became the property of the trunk- 
maker and the butterman. I was especially unwilling, I 
confess, to enrich those respectable trades with the opening 
paper of the abandoned design, in which Master Humphrey 
described himself and his manner of life. Though I now 
affect to make the confession pliilosopliically, as referring to 
a by-gone emotion, I am conscious that my pen winces a 
little even while I write these words. But it was done, and 
wisel\' done, and Master Humphrey's Clock, as originall}^ 
coiistructed, became one of the lost books of the earth — 
which, we all know, are far more precious than any that 
can be read for love or money. 

The machinery ivas clumsy and embarrassing, and Mr. 
Dickens acted judiciously in relieving himself from it. 

One portion of it, however, was very good, though sequels 
of popular stories are usuall^^ inferior to the original. This 
portion introduced Mr. Pickwick as a candidate for one of 
the vacant chairs, (his qualification being a Witch storj'- of 
the time of James the First,) with, in his train, three genera- 
tions of the House of Weller, — namely, the old retired 
coachman, who maintained that "vidth and visdom always 
go together ;" his only son, known in romantic history by 



122 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the name of " Samivel," and a tender scion who acknowl- 
edges the old " whip " as grandfather. 

The scene in which Mr. Pickwick, wearing his immortal 
black gaiters, presents himself to Master Humphrey, is in 
its author's best manner, and, from first to last, the individ- 
uality of the great chief of tJie Club is extremely well 
sustained. While the little coterie up-stairs are enjoying 
themselves under the shadow of the Clock, the two Wellers, 
with a not youthful housekeeper, who is not " a widder," 
and the barber-valet, meet down stairs, and their symposium 
is dignified with the title of "Mr. Weller's Watch." Here 
is a little bit of the narrative : 

It was a warm evening, but the elder Mr. Weller was at- 
tired, notwithstanding, in a most capacious great coat, and 
had his chin euveloped in a large speckled shawl, such as is 
usually worn by stage-coachmen on active service. He 
looked very rosy and ver}^ stout, especially about the legs, 
which appeared to have been compressed into his top-boots 
with some difficulty. His broad-brimmed hat he held under 
his left arm, and with the fore-finger of his right hand he 
touched his forehead a great man}'- times, in acknowledg- 
ment of my presence. 

" I am very glad to see you in such good health, Mr. 
Weller," said L 

"Why, thankee sir," returned Mr. Weller, "the axle an't 
broke 3'et. We keeps up a steady pace — not too sewere 
but vith a moderate degree o' friction — and the consekens is 
that ve're still a runnin' and comes in to the time, regular. 
— My son Samivel, sir, as 3^ou ma}^ have read on in history," 
added Mr. Weller, introducing his first-born. 

I received Sam very graciously, but before he could say a 
word, his lather struck in again. 

" Samivel Teller, sir," said the old gentleman, " has con- 
ferred upon me the ancient title o' grandfather, vich had 
long laid dormouse, and wos s'posed to be nearly hex-tinct, 
in our family. Sammy, relate a anecdote o' vun o'them 
boj'S — that 'ere little anecdote about young Tony, say in' 
as he vould smoke a pipe unbeknown to his mother." 

" Be quiet, can't ,you ? " said Sam, " I never see such a 
old magpie — never ! " 



WELLER AND HIS GRANDSON. 123 

" That 'ere Tony is the blessedest boy," — said Mr. 
Weller, heedless of this rebuff, " the blessedest boy as ever 
I see in my days ! of all the charmin^est infants as ever I 
lieerd tell on, includin' them as wos kivered over b}^ the 
robin red-breasts arter they'd committed sooicide with black- 
berries, there never was anj^ like that 'ere little Tony. 
He's alva3's a play in' vith a quart pot that boy is I To see 
him a settin' down on the door step pretending to drink out 
of it, and fetching a long breath artervards, and smoking a 
bit of fire-vood and sayin' * Now I'm grandfather' — to see 
him a doin' that at two year old is better than any plaj' as 
wos ever wrote. * Now I'm grandfather !' He wouldn't 
take a pint pot if you wos to make him a present on it, 
but he sets his quart and then he sa3's, ' Now I'm grand- 
father !'^" 

Mr. Weller was so overpowered by this picture that he 
straightway fell into a most alarming fit of coughing, y/hich 
must certainl}^ have been attended with some fatal resnlt, 
but for the dexterit}^ and promptitude of Sam, who taking 
a lirm grasp of the shawl just under his father's chin, shook 
him to and fro with great violence, at the same time admin- 
istering some smart blows between his shoulders. By this 
curious mode of treatment Mr. Weller was finalh^-ecovered, 
but with a very crimson face and in a state of great ex- 
haustion. 

"He'll do now, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, who had been 
in some alarm himself 

" He'll do, sir !" cried Sam, looking reproachfully at his 
parent, " Yes, he will do one o' these days — he'll do for his- 
sclf and then he'll wish he hadn't. Did anybody ever see 
sich a inconsiderate old file, — laughing into conwulsions 
afore company, and stamping on the floor as if he'd brought 
his own carpet vith him and wos under a wager to punch 
the pattern out in a given time ? He'll begin again in a 
minute. There — he's goin' olf — I said he would !" 

In fact, Mr. Weller, whose mind was still running npon 
his precocious grandson, was seen to shake his head from 
side to side, while a laugh, working like an earthquake, 
below the surface, produced various extraordinary appear- 
ances in his face, chest, and shoulders, the more alarming 
because unaccompanied by any noise whatever. These 
emotions, however, gradually subsided, and after three or 
four short relapses, he wiped his eyes with the cuff of his 
coat, and looked about him with tolerable composure. 



124 LIFE 01? CHARLES DICKEKS. 

Surely, this is quite as good as any of the scenes in PicJc- 
ivick, in which Old Weller appeared ? Sam, also, is racy — 
though not so talkative as he was in the old storj^ How- 
ever, neither the public nor the author liked the interruptions, 
and, in a short time, the new tale went on, without them. 

The Old Curiosity Shop is the most poetical, tender, and 
imaaginative of Mr. Dickens's compositions. Little Nell, 
who is thought of by readers rather as a real than a fictitious 
personage, is superior to Mignon, as drawn by Goethe in 
" Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship." She is the embodi- 
ment of youth, girlish beaut}^, the wisdom which comes from 
suffering, and perfect innocence. Unfortunately, she is 

" Too bright and good 
For human nature's daily food." 

She is an id3dlic impossibility, and not " of the earth, 
earthy." She is only too perfect — and her death is worth}^ 
of her life. Many a tear has been drawn forth b}'' her im- 
aginary adventures. Mr. Pickens sa^^s of this tale: " The 
man}?- friends it won me, and the many hearts it turned to 
me when the}^ were full of private sorrow, invest it with an 
interest in m}^ mind which is not a public one, and the right- 
ful place of which appears to be 'a more removed ground.' 
I will merely observe, therefore, that, in writing the book, 
I had it always in my fancy to surround the lonely figure 
of the child with grotesque and wild but not impossible com- 
panions, and to gather about her innocent face and pure in- 
tentions, associates as strange and uncongenial as the grim 
objects that are about her bed when her history is first fore- 
shadowed." 

He adds, " I have a mournful pride in one recollection as- 
sociated with 'Little Nell.' While she was yet upon her 
wanderings, not then concluded, there appeared in a literary 
journal, an essay of which she was the principal theme, so 
earnestly, so eloquently, and tenderl}^ appreciative and of all 
her shadowy kith and kin, that it would have been insensi- 



DICK SWIVELLER. 125 

bility in me, if I could have read it without an unusual glow 
of pleasure and encouragement. Long afterwards, and 
when I had come to knov/ him well, and to see him stout of 
heart going slowly down into his grave, I knew the author 
of that essay to be Thomas Hood." 

There are not so many characters in this stor}^ as are to 
be found in some others by the same hand, but almost every 
one of them tells. To balance monstrositj- against mon- 
strosity we have Quilp, with Sampson and Sally Brass. Tlie 
grandfather and his brother stand alone. The Punch-and- 
Judy exhibitors are hit off to the life — and we have a warm 
wish in our heart for excellent Mrs. Jarley. The old school- 
master and his favorite pupil are delicately limned. Kit 
and the rest of the Nubbles family, in which pretty Barbara 
may be included, are creatures of daily life. We shut the 
book with a hearty hope that, having made an out-pensioner 
of Mrs. Jiniwin, pretty Mrs. Quilp did lead a merry life, with 
her second husband, on the dead dwarf's money. Of the 
excellent Garlands, no praise can be too high — such people 
are the salt of the earth ; and what may be said of Mr. Richard 
Swiveller ? Thoughtless and careless, but tenderhearted and 
true, he is good foil to the wonderful little Marchioness. 
How splendidly he comes out, at last, when the Notar}' tells 
him, just after he had nearly lost his life in a fever, that he had 
fallen heir to an annuity of one hundred and fifty guineas a 
year, " Please God, we'll make a scholar of the Marchioness 
yet ! And she shall walk in silk attire, and siller have to 
spare, or maj^ I never rise from this bed again I" She had 
saved his life by nursing him through a brain-fever, and, for 
he had a heart in his bosom, despite of being a thoughtless, 
careless man, he does educate her, at a superior school, 
though it keeps him poor for half a dozen years. " In a 
word," the story runs, "Mr. Swiveller kept the Marchioness 
at this establishment until she was, at a moderate guess, full 
nineteen years of age — good-looking, clever, and good-hu- 
mored ; when he began to consider seriously what was to be 



126 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

clone next. On one of his periodical visits, while he was re- 
volving this question in his mind, the Marchioness came 
down to him, alone, looking more smiling, and more fresh 
than ever. Then it occurred to him, but not for the first 
time, that if she would marry him, how comfortable they 
might be ! So Richard asked her ; whatever she said, it 
wasn't no; and they were married in good earnest that day 
week, which gave Mr. Swiveller frequent occasion to remark 
at divers subsequent periods that there had been a young 
lady saving up for him after all." 

Next to excellent Sam Weller, let us give our regards to 
Dick Swiveller. 

Barnahy Radge, the most highly-wrought, earnest, and 
powerful of ail his works, I will not except even the impres- 
sive Tale of Two Cities, was the second long story which 
Mr. Dickens placed in ** Master Humphrey's Clock." It is 
historical, and is more true in its details than the great 
majority of histories. The time was June, 1780, and the 
events described are the No-Popery Riots which that well- 
meaning, weak-minded fanatic, Lord George Gordon, may 
be said to have created. Dickens wrote that tale as a plea 
for tolerance, declaring that the Riots taught a good lesson ; 
" that what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by 
men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set 
at naught the commonest principles of right and wrong ; 
that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution ; that it 
is senseless, besotted, inveterate, and unmerciful ; all His- 
tory teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our 
hearts too well, to profit by even so humble and familiar an 
example as the ' No-Popery' riots of seventeen hundred and 
eighty." It was meant to be an argument, too, against Cap- 
ital Punishment, the excess of which was notorious in these 
days. ITow London was in the hands of a drunken and infuri- 
ated mob, for several days, with terrible ruin to property and 
life, and how fanaticism raised a devil which it could not lay, 
are written in that tale : — too much with melodraaialic 



THE RAVENS. 127 

effect, perhaps,-biit very powerfully. Mixed up with this is 
the niyster^^ of a dreadful murder. But there is a good deal 
of relief. Old Willet, the landlord, and his friends are 
peculiar characters, and so are the locksmith, with his 
shrewish wife and tliat coquettish pocket-Venus, his daughter, 
Dolly Varden. Mr. Chester, the incarnation of selfishness, 
is a study, and directly opposite is Mr. Haredale. Simon 
Tappertit and the accomplished Miss Miggs go hand in-hand 
together, for a time, and even Dennis, the hangman, is said 
to be no caricature. Then Joseph Willet, whose arm was 
" took off in the defence of the ISalwanners in America where 
the war is." We have pity for poor Hugh, and a kind 
thought for honest John Grueby. But, in the van, are Bar- 
nab}^ and his illustrious raven, to be known through all 
coming time, as well as Lance's dog, sketched by Shake- 
speare. Without Grip, poor mad^ Barnaby would resemble 
a ship without a rudder. The two must go together. Grip 
evidently was one of Dickens's favorites, for a supplement- 
ary notice, in his last preface, thus disposes of him : 

The raven in this story is a compound of two great origi- 
nals, of whom I have been, at different times, the proud 
possessor. The first was in the bloom of his youth, when he 
was discovered in a modest retirement in London, by a 
friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as 
Sir Hugh Evans says of Anne Page, " good gifts," which he 
improved by study and attention in a most exemplary man- 
ner. He slept in a stable — generally on horseback— and so 
terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity, 
that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his ge- 
nius, to walk oflT unmolested with the dog's dinner, from be- 
fore his lace. He was rapidly rising in acquirements 
and virtues, when, in an evil hour, his stable was newly 
painted. He observed the workmen closel}", saw that they 
were careful of tiie paint, and immediately burned to possess 
it On their going to dinner, he ate up all the\' had left 
behind, consisting of a pound or two of white lead ; and 
this youthful indiscretion terminated in death. 

While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend 
of mine in Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted 



128 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

raven at a village public house, which he prevailed upon the 
landlord to part with for a consideration, and sent up to 
me. The first act of this Sao-e, was, to administer to the 
eiTects of his predecessor, by disinterring all the cheese and 
halfpence he had buried in the garden — a work of immense 
labor and research, to which he devoted all the energies of 
his mind. When he had achieved this task, he applied him- 
self to the acquisition of stable language, in which he soon 
became such an adept, that he would perch outside my win- 
dow, and drive imaginary horses with great skill, all day ; 
perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former 
master sent his duty with him, "and if I wished the bird to 
come out very strong, would I be so good as show him a 
drunken man " — which I never did, having (unfortunately) 
none but sober people at hand. But I could hardly have 
respected him more, whatever the stimulating influences of 
his sight might have been. He had not the least respect, I 
am sorr}^ to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the 
cook ; to whom he was attached — but only, I fear, as a Po- 
liceman might have been. Once I met him unexpectedly, 
about half-a-mile off', walking down the middle of the public 
street, attended by a pretty large crowd, and spontaneously 
exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His gravity 
under those tr3'iug circumstances, I never can forget, nor 
the extraordinarj^ gallantry with which, refusing to be 
brought home, he defended himself behind a pump, 
until overpowered by numbers. It may have been 
that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it 
may have been that he took some pernicious sub- 
stance into his bill, and thence into his maw — which is 
not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed the greater 
part of the garden- wall by digging out the mortar, broke 
countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty 
all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed, in 
splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase of six steps 
and a landing — but after some three years he too was taken 
ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the 
last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over 
on his back with a sepulchral cr^^ of " Cuckoo !" 

After this mournful deprivation, I was, for a long time, 
ravenless. The kinduess of another friend at length pro- 
vided me with another raven; but he is not a genius. He 
leads the life of a hermit, in m}^ little orchard, on the sum- 



IN EDINBURGH. 129 

mit of Shakespeare's Gad's Hill ; he has no relish for soci- 
et}^ ; he gives no evidence of ever cultivating his mind ; and 
he has picked np nothing but meat since I have known him 
— except the faculty of barking like a dog. 

Barnahy Budge, completed in 1841, was dedicated to Mr. 
Samuel Rogers, with a complimentary reference to his 
Pleasures of Memory. 

Lord Jeffrey, erst so formidable, as Editor of the Edin- 
burgh Bevieiv, and a great reader and admirer of Dickens, 
wrote to him some years after The Old Curiosity Shop was 
published, saying : " How funny that besoin of yours for 
midnight rambling on city streets, and how curious that 
Macaulay should have the same taste or fancy. * * i 
wish I had time to discuss the grounds and extent of 
my preference of your soft and tender characters to his 
humorous and grotesque ; but I can only sa}^ now, that I 
am as far as possible from undervaluing the merit, and even 
the charm of the latter ; only it is a lower and more imit- 
able stjde. I have always thought Quilp and Swiveller 
great marvels of art ; and yet I should have admired the 
last far less, had it not been for his redeeming gratitude 
to the Marchioness, and that inimitable convalescent repast, 
with his hand locked in hers, and her tears of delight. If 
you will only own that 3'ou are prouder of that scene than of 
any of his antecedent fantasticals, I shall be satisfied with 
the conformity of our judgments." In a subsequent letter, 
he wrote : " I do not consider Quilp or Dick Swiveller as 
at all out of nature." 

In the summer of 1841, a public compliment, of a very 
high character, was conferred upon Mr. Dickens, by two 
hundred and fifty of the literati, lawyers, and other public- 
ists in the city of Edinburgh. The Scotch are not readily 
influenced into enthusiasm, but when they are aroused, it is 
to some purpose. In her life of her father (Professor 
Wilson), Mrs. Gordon simply states " that he presided at a 
large public dinner given in honor of Charles Dickens." 



130 LIFE OF CHARLES. DICKEKS. 

I believe that Lord Jeffrey had somctliing to do with this 
compliment. Early in Ma}^ he was in London, circnlatino; 
among the best Whig society, and, in a letter to his old 
friend, Lord Cockburn, a Scottish Judge like himself, men- 
tions the numerous invitations he was compelled to decline, 
adding : " To make amends, however, I have seen a great 
deal of Tommy Moore, who is luckil}^ here, on a visit like my 
own ; * * * and, above all, of Charles Dickens — with 
whom I have struck up what I mean to be an eternal and inti- 
mate friendship. He lives very near us here, and I often run 
over and sit an hour tete-a-tete, or take a long walk in the 
Park with him — the only way really to know or to be known 
b}^ either man or woman. Taken in this way, I find him 
very amiable and agreeable. In mixed company — where 
he is now much sought after as a lion — he is rather reserved, 
etc. He has dined here, and we with him, at rather too 
sumptuous a dinner for a man with a family and only 
beginning to be rich, though selling 44,000 copies of his 
weekly issues of 3Iaster Humplirey^s Clock.''^ The re- 
gard of Jeffrey for Dickens was " eternal and intimate " 
while the old critic lived, and, at various times, as will be 
subsequently mentioned, manifested itself in the presen- 
tation of some very good advice, personal and literary, 
from the aged to the youthful writer. 

However the Dickens^s. dinner at Edinburgh originated, it 
took place on the 25th June, 1841, with " Christopher North " 
as Chairman. In a private letter written at the time, I find it 
recorded that " on his right sat the distinguished guest — 
a little, slender, pale-faced, boyish-looking individual, and 
perhaps the very last man in the room whom a stranger to 
his portrait could have picked on as being the author of 
Pickwick. I really was quite in pain for him ; I felt as if 
the tremendous cheering w^hich accompanied his entrance 
would overwhelm him. After dinner, one of the stewards 
introduced into the galler}^ Mrs. Dickens, accompanied by 
about one hundred and fifty ladies in full dinner dress ; she 



RETUPvMING THANKS. 131 

was most loudl}^ cheered." It was very doubtful, even on the 
morning of the banquet, whether, from ill liealth, Professor 
Wilson would be able to take the chair, but his energetic char- 
acter and his generous enthusiasm in the cause of literature 
made him rise superior to mere ph3'sical w^eakness, and he 
spoke more than once, with a spirited eloquence all his own 
— so fervid its expression and so lofty its character. He 
pronounced an eulogium upon Mr. Dickens, at once dis- 
criminating and generous, adding " He is also a satirist. 
He satirizes human life ; but he does not satirize it to de- 
grade it. He does not wish to pull down what is high, into 
the neighborhood of what is low. He does not seek to 
represent all virtue as a hollow thing in which no confidence 
can be placed. He satirizes only the selfish and the 
hard-hearted and the cruel ; he exposes, in a hideous light, 
the principle which, when acted upon, gives a power to men 
in the lowest grades to carry on a more terrific tyranny 
than if placed upon thrones." 

After the toast had been duly honored, Mr. Dickens rose 
to return thanks. " Then," the letter states, " There was 
silence deep as in the tomb — not a breath stirred, or a 
muscle moved in that crowded room — ever}^ e3'e was riveted 
on that .wonderful, man^every. ear painfully on the alert to 
catch the first tones of the voice of that mightj^ magician ; 
and soft were those tones, and calm that voice, as though 
he were dictating to an amanuensis the next number of 
Humphrej^'s Clock. He is as happy in public speaking as 
in writing — nothing studied, nothing artistical ; his were 
no written speeches, conned, and got by heart, but every 
sentence seemed to be suggested on the impulse of the 
moment. Before concluding his address, he made a few 
observations respecting the untimely death of his little 
heroine (Nelly). He said, ' When I first conceived the idea 
of conducting that simple story to its termination, I de- 
termined rigidly to adhere to it, and never to forsake the 
end I had in view. I thought what a good thing it would 



132 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

be if, in my little work of pleasant amusement, I could sub- 
stitute a garland of fresh flowers for the sculptured horrors 
which disgrace the tomb. If I have put in my book any- 
thing which can fill the young mind with better thoughts of 
death, or soften the grief of older hearts ; if I have written 
one word which can afford pleasure or consolation to old or 
young, in time of trial, I shall consider it as something 
achieved, which I shall be glad to look back upon in after 
life.' He made a very long speech, and from the com- 
mencement to the end never hesitated a moment, or mis- 
placed a word. In the course of the evening he Jiad to 
propose several toasts, and, of course, preface them with 
appropriate remarks, all of which were in the same happy 
manner, and received with an enthusiasm approaching to 
idolatry." One of his toasts was the health of ** Christo- 
pher North, the old man of the lion-heart and sceptre- 
crutch." It is singular enough that, during Wilson's long 
connection with Blackwood's Magazine, he scarcely ever 
mentioned the name of Dickens. One would have thought 
that he would have gladly expatiated on the genius whose 
track was so brilliant and unexpected. 

It was remarked, at the great Dickens'^ dinner, the first of 
many similar entertainments, that the two best speakers 
were the chairman and the guest. The latter, then in his 
thirtieth year, was known by his intimate friends to possess 
remarkable readiness and ability as a speaker, but this was 
the first occasion of his publicly exhibiting these gifts. He 
possessed to an eminent degree, that faculty of " thinking on 
one's legs," which, with presence of mind, and the intuitive 
talent for putting the best words in the proper places, con- 
stitutes good oratory if not true eloquence. Mr. Thackera}^, 
on the other hand, was a poor speaker, who prepared a 
great deal beforehand, took pains to commit it to memory, 
delivered it with a certain fear, probably forgetting half of 
what he had to say when the time for speaking came, and 
would confusedly blunder and stammer to his own mortifi- 



ARRIVAL IN BOSTON. 133 

cntion and that of his friends. Mr. Dickens, for years 

before he died, had the reputation of being the best after- 
dinner speaker in England. 



CHAPTER X. 

VISIT TO AMERICA. — AT BOSTON. — DICKENS'S DINNER. — 
GEOFFREY CRAYON AND BOZ. — DICKENS AT SUNNYSIDE. — 
IN PHILADELPHIA. — WASHINGTON. — IN CONGRESS. 

Assured by a warm reception in the New World, and it 
lay be well to remember, having a purpose, besides seeing 
le country and the people, of endeavoring to get up a 
gWtle pressure of the subject of Copyright, Mr. Dickens 
aild his wife were passengers on the mail steamer which left 
Liverpool en the 3d, arrived at Boston on the 22d of 
Jafiuary, and quitted New York for England on the tth of 
June, 1842. During a period of four months and a half he 
saw several cities in New England, New York, Philadelphia, 
Washington, Richmond, Baltimore, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, 
Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, the Looking-Glass Prairie, 
Columbus, Sandusky, Columbus, Niagara, Canada, (Toronto, 
Kingston, Montreal, Quebec, and St. John's,) Lebanon, the 
Shaker Village, and West Point. He can scarcely be said 
to have seen any thing of the South, for he had but a 
glimpse of Richmond. 

He was received at Boston with a generous and wild en- 
thusiasm, which may be said to have hailed him in every 
place where his name was known, and where, in a nation of 
readers such as we are, was it unknown ? Not only private 
but public hospitality was tendered to him, with the heartiest 
liberality. In January, 1842, the Boston Transcript con- 
tained this paragraph : 

We are requested to state that Charles Dickens, Esq., 
will be at the Tremont Theatre this cvenin.o:. The desire to 



134 LIFE OF CIIAELES DICKENS. 

see this popular author will, no rlonbt, attract a large 
aiKlience. We had an hour's conversation with him last 
evening, and found him one of the most frank, sociable, 
noble-hearted gentlemen we ever met with, perfectly free 
from all haughtiness or apparent self-importance. His lady, 
too, is most beautiful and accomplished, and appears worthy 
to be the partner and companion of her distinguished hus- 
band. In fact, he is just such a person as we had supposed 
him to be, judging from his writings, which have acquired a 
popuiaritj^ almost unprecedented in this country. 

Of course the theatre was veiled, just as Old Drury or 
Covent Garden, in London, would have been at that time, 
if Queen Victoria had given "a Royal bespeak" to either. 

There was a Dickens\ banquet at Boston on the 1st of 
February, at which the most notable men of literature, 
politics, business, and the liberal professions were present, 
with Mr. Josiah Quincy, Jr., in the chair. Mr. Dickens 
spoke at some length, and said: 

There is one other point connected witl:\ the labors (if 
I may call them so) that you hold in such generous esteem, 
to which I cannot help adverting. I cannot help express- 
ing the delight, the more than happiness, it was to me to 
find so strong an interest awakened on this side of the 
water in favor of that little heroine of mine to whom your 
President has made allusion, who died in her youth. I had 
letters about that child, in England, from the dwellers in 
log-huts among the morasses and swamps and densest 
forests and deep solitudes of the Far West. Many a sturdy 
band, hard with the axe and spade and browned b}^ the sum- 
mer's sun, has taken up the pen and written to me a little 
history of domestic joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am 
proud to say, with something of interest in that little tale, 
or some comfort or happiness derived from it; and the 
writer has always addressed me, not as a writer of books for 
sale, resident, some four or five thousand miles away, but 
as a friend to whom he might freely impart the jo3^s and 
sorrows of his own fireside. Many a mother — I could 
reckon them now by dozens, not by units — has done the 
like ; and has told me how she lost such a child at such a 
time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and 
how, in this or that respect, she resembled Nell. I do 



GEOFFREY CRAYON. 135 

assure j^ou that no circumstance of my life has given me 
one-hundredth part of the gratification I have derived from 
this source. I was wavering at the time whether or not to 
wind up my Clock and come and see this country ; and this 
decided me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I 
were bound to pack up my clothes and come and see my 
friends ; and even now I have such an odd sensation in 
connection with these things that you have no chance of 
spoiling me. I feel as though we were agreeing — as indeed 
we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the classes 
from which they are drawn — about third parties, in whom 
we had a common interest. At every new act of kindness 
on 3'our part, I say it to myself: That's for Oliver — I 
should not wonder if that was meant for Smike — I have no 
doubt that it was intended for Nell ; and so became a much 
happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man than 
ever I was before. 

A few days later he arrived in New York, which, by a 
mistake which even its natives frequently make, he 
designates "the beautiful metropolis of America." He had 
not known Paris at this time, and was struck with the 
vivacity and variety of our great city. Here, also, he was 
remarkably feted, in private and in public, there being a 
great Dickens**^ Ball, as well as a great Dickens^s Dinner. 
Washington Irving presided at the latter. Irving and 
Dickens first met in New York. It seems that, some months 
before, Geoffrey Cra3^on had written to Boz, expressing the 
delight which Little Nell had given him. At this time, 
Irving was fifty-eight and Dickens twenty-nine 3'ears old. 
Mr. Charles Lanman, of Georgetown, D. C, who had the good 
fortune of knowing both, trul}^ says that Dickens's reply was 
minute, impetuousl}" kind, and eminently characteristic. It 
begun thus : " There is no man in the world could have 
given me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by j^our kind note 
of the 13th of last month, [April, 1842.] There is no living 
writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose 
ai)probation I should feel so proud to earn. And with 
everything you have written upon my shelves, and in my 
thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly and 



136 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

truly sa3^ so. If jou could know how earnestly I write 
this, 3'OU would be glad to read it — as I hope you will be, 
faintl}^ guessing at the warmth of the hand I autobiogra- 
phicall}^ hold out to j^ou over the broad Atlantic. * * I have 
been so accustomed to associate you with my pleasantest 
and happiest thoughts, and with my leisure hours, that I 
rush at once into full confidence with you, and fall, as it 
were naturally, and by the very laws of gravity, into j^our 
open arms. * * I cannot thank you enough for your cordial 
and generous praise, or tell you what deep and lasting 
gratification it has given me." There were some allusions 
to Irving's works, which must have pleased the older 
writer : " I should love to go with you, as I have gone, 
God knows how often — into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, 
and Green Arbor Court, and Westminster Abbej'-. I should 
like to travel with you, astride the last of the coaches, down 
to Bracebridge Hall. It would make my heart glad to 
compare notes with you about that shabby gentleman in 
the oilcloth hat and red nose, who sat in the nine-cornered 
back-parlor of the Mason's Arms ; and about Robert 
Preston, and the tallow-chandler's widow, whose sitting- 
room is second nature to me ; and about all those delight- 
ful places and people that I used to walk about and dream 
of in the day-time, when a very small and not over-particu- 
larl3^-taken-care-of-boy. * * Diedrich Knickerbocker I have 
worn to death in my pocket, and yet i should show you his 
mutilated carcass with a joy past all expression." The 
closing sentence is characteristic. " Do you suppose the 
post office clerks care to receive letters ? A postman, I 
imagine, is quite callous. Conceive his delivering one to 
himself, without being startled by a preliminary double 
knock." 

In October of that year (1841) Irving received intimation 
from Dickens that he was " coming to America." Irving's 
name was before the Senate of the United States, on the 
nomination of President Tyler, originating with Daniel 



NEW YORK BANQUET. 137 

"Webster then Secretary of Stute, as Ambassador to the 
Court of Madrid. This was as unexpected and unsolicited 
as it was popular and merited. With these " blushing honors 
thick upon him," Irving was met, for the first time, at New 
York. As Mr. Lanman correctly says, then it was that the 
two lions first met face to face ; and for a few weeks, at 
Sunnyside, and in the delightful literarj^ society which was 
a striking feature in New York life at that time, they saw as 
much of each other as circumstances would allow. Professor 
C. C. Felton, in his remarks on the death of Mr. Irving, 
before the Historical Societ}^ of Massachusetts, gave us 
some interesting recollections of this winter in New York. 
Among other things he said : " I passed much of the time 
with Mr. Irving and Mr. Dickens ; and it was delightful to 
witness the cordial intercourse of the young man, in the 
flush and glory of his fervent genius, and his elder compeer, 
then in the assured possession of immortal renown. Dick- 
ens said in his frank, hearty manner, that from his childhood 
he had known the works of Irving; and that before he 
thought of coming to this country, he had received a letter 
from him, expressing the delight he felt in reading the story 
of Little Nell." 

Mr. Lanman must permit me again to quote from his very 
interesting article : — " But the crowning event of the winter 
in question was the great dinner given to Mr. Dickens by 
his many admirers at the old City Hotel. I was a mere boy 
at the time, a Pearl street clerk, but through the kindness 
of certain friends the honor was granted to me of taking a 
look from a side door at the august array of gifted authors 
before they were summoned to the sumptuous table. It was 
but a mere glimpse that I enjo}' ed ; but while Mr. Irving, as 
the presiding host, was sacrificing his sensitive nature for 
the gratification of his friend, and was, by breaking down in 
his speech of welcome, committing the only failure of his 
life." 

Mr. Felton, in his remarks before the Massachusetts 



138 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Historical Society, after Mr. Irving's death, said, " Great 
and varied as was the genius of Mr. Irving, there was one 
thing he shrank with a comical terror from attempting, and 
that was a dinner speech.^'' He anticipated that he should 
" break down," and had prepared a manuscript speech some 
twelve to twenty pages long. He got through two or three 
sentences pretty easily, but in the next hesitated ; and, after 
one or two attempts to go on, gave it up, with a graceful 
allusion to the tournament, and the troops of Knights all 
armed and eager for the fray; and ended with the toast, 
" Charles Dickens, the guest of the evening." In the news- 
paper reports, this speech occupied a dozen or twenty lines. 
Mr. Dickens own speech, in reply, was eloquent and modest. 

Soon after the New York dinner, business called Mr. Ir- 
ving to Washington, and Mr. Dickens made his arrange- 
ments to be there at the same time. He went on through 
Philadelphia, where he put up at the old United States Hotel, 
Chestnut street, part of which was the office of Forney's 
Press, when that paper was established in 185*7. He said, 
in his book, Philadelphia " is a handsome city, but distract- 
Ingly regular. After walking about for an hour or two, I 
felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. 
The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen and the rim of 
my hat to expand, beneath its Quakerlj^ influence. My hair 
shrunk into a sleek, short crop, my hands folded themselves 
upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts 
of taking lodgings in Mark Lane, over against the Market- 
place, and of making a large fortune by speculations in corn, 
came over me involuntarily." He praised the water works, 
the hospital, the quiet, quaint old library, named after 
Franklin, what he saw of our society, and paid particular 
attention to the Eastern Penitentiary and its system of 
solitary confinement, which, in company with many other 
humane persons, he strongly condemned. 

Mr. Dickens went to Washington by steamboat and there 
renewed his intimacy with Washington Irving. " They 



AT WASHINGTON. 139 

laughed together," Mr. Lanman says, " at the follies of the 
politicians, enjoyed the companionship of the great trium- 
virs — Webster, Calhoun and Clay — and were of course vic- 
timized at the President's receptions." On one of these oc- 
casions the honors were certainly divided between the tv/o 
authors ; and while we know that Mr. Dickens had no 
reason to complain of any want of attention on the part of 
the people, it is pleasant to read his comments upon the 
conduct of the assembled company toward Mr. Irving. " I 
sincerely believe," said he in his American Notes, " that in 
all the madness of American politics, few public men would 
have been so earnestly, devotedly and affectionately caressed 
as this most charming writer ; and I have seldom respected a 
public assembly more than I did this eager throng when I 
saw them turning with one mind from noisy orators and 
officers of state, and flocking with a generous and honest 
impulse, round the man of quiet pursuits ; proud in his pro- 
motion as reflecting back upon their country, and grateful 
to him with their whole hearts for the store of graceful fan- 
cies he had poured out among them." 

In Washington every attention was paid to Mr. Dickens. 
The Hon. B. B. French, 1^^,, who resided in that city at the 
time, kept a careful diary of events, a copy of which has been 
kindly lent me by H. M. Keim, Esq., of Beading. From this 
I learn that, in March 10th, 1842, Mr. Dickens visited the 
House of Representatives with Mr. N. P. Tallmadge, of the 
Senate. Two days later, he " was in the House " nearly 
through its session. He was invited to a seat within the 
bar by some member, and occupied the self-same chair in 
which Lord Morpeth sat nearly every day while he was in the 
city. On the following Monday he was entertained with din- 
ner at Boulanger's : Hon. John Quincy Adams and General 
Van Ness were invited guests. Hon. George M. Keim was 
president, in the room of the Hon. John Taliaferro, who 
was expected to preside, but was unavoidably absent from 
Washington, and Hon. M. St. Clair Clarke and Hon Aaron 
Ward were vice presidents. The following persons made 



140 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the party : Mr. Dickens, Mr. Adams, and General Yan Ness 
as guests ; General Keim, Mr. M. St. C. Clarke, General 
Ward, Messrs. Sumpter, Roosevelt, Irwin, Gushing and 
Hohnes of the House of Representatives ; and Messrs. 
Kingman, F. W. Thomas, (the author,) Bache, Rice, John 
Tyler, Jr., J. Howard Payne, Frailey, Keller, Dimitrj^, 
Major Harrison, Messrs. Samuel P. Walker, Robert N. John- 
. ston, Sutton, H. G. Wheeler, Riggs, and B. B. French. * * 
Wit, sentiment, song-singing, story-telling, and speech-ma- 
king occupied the time till eleven, when Mr. Dickens rose, and 
in the most feelingly beautiful manner possible, bade us, good 
night. The diarist warmly eulogized the guest, saying, 
" Dickens, by his modesty, his social powers, and his elo- 
quence, has added to the high esteem in which I was pre- 
viously induced to hold him. I believe every person present 
was delighted." Mr. Keim proposed Mr. Dickens's health in 
the following exalted terms : " Philanthropy and Genius, and 
a representative of both, now our guest in Washington, 
whom Washington himself would have rejoiced to welcome." 
Dickens, in reply said, " that if this were a public dinner, 
he supposed he would be expected to make a speech ; as it 
was but a social party, surely no such effort would be ex- 
pected of him ; and when he looked about the table, and 
saw gentlemen whose positions in public life rendered it un- 
avoidable that they should either speak themselves or listen to 
the speeches of others every day, his refraining upon this 
occasion must be far more acceptable, and surely possess 
more novelty than any remarks he might make — and he must 
be allowed to presume that here, in theenjoj-ment of a social 
hour, they will be happy to give their ears some rest, and 
he should, therefore, consider himself relieved from making 
a speech. He would, however, say, that like the Prince in 
the Arabian Tales, he had been doomed, since he arrived in 
this hospitable country, to make new friendships every 
night, and cut their heads off on the following morning. 
But the recollection of this night — -wherever he might go — 



SPEECH IN WASHINGTON. Ul 

should accompany him, and like the bright smiles of his better 
angel, be treasured in his mind as long as memory remains." 
Among the subsequent toasts were " The health of John 
Quincy Adams," '' The City of Boston," and " The Old 
Curiosity Shop" — among whose notions are the oldest wine, 
the newest wit, and the best cradle in the United States. 
After the evidence our guest had of the goodness of the two 
former, we hope and trust they gave him the benefit of the 
latter. After " The Queen of Great Britain," had been drank 
standing, Mr. Dickens said : "Allow me to assume the charac- 
ter of Mr. Pickwick, and in that character to give you ' The 
President of the United States,'" which was also drank stand- 
ing. By this time the company had apparently reached a 
l^eriod of very pleasurable enjoyment, for, after Mr. Caleb 
Cushing had responded to '* Our Countr}^ and our Guest — 
Both in the first vigor of their youth, and both made great 
by the might of mind," he proposed " The Health of Mr. 
Pickwick." At eleven o'clock Mr. Dickens arose and said, 
" I rise to propose to j-ou one more sentiment ; it must 
be my last ; it consists of two words — ' Good night !' 
Since I have been seated at this table I have received the 
welcome intelligence that the news from the dear ones has 
come at last — that the long expected letters have arrived. 
Among them are certain scrawls from little beings across 
the ocean, of great interest to me, and I thought of them 
for many days past, in connection with drowned men and 
a noble ship, broken up and lying in fragments upon the bot- 
tom of the ocean.* But they are here, and you will appre- 
ciate the anxiety I feel to read them. Permit me, in allu- 
sion to some remarks made by a gentleman near me, to 
say, that every effort of my pen has been intended to 
elevate the masses of societj^ ; to give them the station 
they deserve among mankind. With that intention I com- 

* The Caledonia was driven back to England by tempestuous 
weather, and fears were entertained that she was lost. 

9 



142 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKENS. 

raenced writing, and I assure you, as long as I write at all, 
that shall be the principal motive of my efforts. Gentle- 
men, since I arrived on your hospitable shore, and in my 
flight over 3^our land, you have given me everything I can 
ask but time — that you cannot give me, and you are aware 
that I must devote some of it to myself; therefore, with the 
assurance that this has been the most pleasant evening I 
have passed in the United States, I must bid you farewell, 
and once more repeat the words, Good Night I" The guest 
was not to be let off without a parting bumper, on Sheri- 
dan's plan, 

" Let tlie toast pass, 
Drink to the lass, 
I'll warrant 'twill prove an excuse for a glass," 

for Mr. St. Clair Clarke proposed " Mrs. Dickens : May her 
stay amongst us be pleasant; may her return voyage be 
comfortable, and when she reaches her home, may she find 
her little ones as healthy as they surely will be happy.'* 

After a short visit to Richmond, Mr, Dickens went to 
Baltimore, via Washington, and wrote a hasty note to 
Irving, hoping he would join him at Baltimore, adding, 
" What pleasure I have had in seeing and talking with you 
I will not attempt to say. I shall never forget it as long as 
I live. What ivould I give if we could have but a quiet week 
together ! Spain is a lazy place, and its climate an indolent 
one. But if you ever have leisure under its sunny skies to 
think of a man who loves you, and holds communion with 
your spirit oftener, perhaps, than any other person alive — 
leisure from listlessness I mean — and will write to me in Lon- 
don, you will give me an inexpressible amount of pleasure." 

Irving did meet him at Baltimore. In a letter, (Wash- 
ington, 5th of February, 1868,) Mr. Dickens thus mentions 
the fact to Mr. Lanman ; " Your reference to my dear 
friend, Washington Irving, renews the vivid impressions 
reawakened in my mind at Baltimore but the other da3^ I 
saw his fine face for the last time in that city. He came 



MINT-JULEP. 143 

there from New York to pass a clay or two with me before I 
went westward ; and they were made among the most memor- 
able of my life by his delightful fancy and genial humor. 
Some unknown admirer of his books and mine sent to the 
hotel a most enormous mint-julep, wreathed with flowers. 
We sat, one on either side of it, with great solemnity (it 
filled a respectable-sized round table), but the solemnity 
was of very short duration. It was quite an enchanted 
julep, and carried us among innumerable people and places 
that we both knew. The julep held out far into the night, 
and my memory never saw him afterwards otherwise than as 
bending over it with his straw with an attempted air of 
gravity (after some anecdote involving some wonderfully 
droll and delicate observation of character), and then, as 
his eye caught mine, melting into that captivating laugh of 
his, which was the brightest and best I have ever heard." 

The enchanted julep was a gift from the proprietor of 
Guy's Hotel, Baltimore, and, "having held out far into the 
night," must have been on a magnificent scale, at first — large 
enough for Gog and Magog, were they alive, to have become 
mellow upon. George Cruikshank or H. L. Stevens — no in- 
ferior artist should dare to attempt it — might win additional 
fame by sketching the two authors, so much akin in genius 
and geniality, imbibing the generous, mellifluous fluid from 
a pitcher which, like the magic purse of Fortunatus, seemed 
always full ! 

Dickens— who can doubt it ? — would have doubly enjoyed 
the nectarious julep had he known that, in the masque of 
''Comus,"by John Milton, a good receipt for making it 
was given, more than two centuries back. The hero, son of 
Bacchus, is first described as 

Offering to every weary traveller 
His orient liquor in a crystal glass, 
To quench the drouth of Phoebus, 

and then oflers it to the lad 3^, thus addressing her : 



144 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

And first, behold this cordial Julep here, 
That flames and dances in liis crystal bounds, 
With spirits of balm and fragrant Syrops mixed : 
Not that Nepenthes, which the wife of Thoue 
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena, 
Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 
To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst. 

The identical name, "Julep," is mentioned, then the ingre- 
dients — the balm, or mint, which gives the flavor ; the 
spirits ; the " fragrant syrop,^^ so palpably denoting the sac- 
charine element; mixed up in, and imbibed from, a " cr3'stal 
glass ;" and, to crown all, the unmistakable addition of ice, 
which makes the mixture not only " to life so friendly," but 
*' so cool to thirst " that it would actually " quench the drouth 
of Phoebus." However Milton's tastes may have deterio- 
rated in old age, when he had fallen upon evil days, his 
early propensities were evidently genial, if not hilarious. 
At the age of twenty-three, when he wrote the exquisite 
poem of " L'Allegro," he exclaims. 

Haste thee, nymph^, and bring with thee 
Jest, and youthful jollity. 

Even in " Paradise Lost," which is a serious poem, Milton 
was unable to refrain from an allusion to mixed liquors, for 
he mentioned in the most express terms, being "bound for 
the port of NegusV 

Mr. Dickens acknowledged the receipt of the Julep, in the 
following letter, which is carefully and proudly preserved at 
Guy's, South Seventh street, Philadelphia: 

Barnum's Hotel, 

Twenty-third March, 1842. 

My Dear Sir : — I am truly obliged to j^ou for the beau- 
tiful and delicious mint-julep you have so kindly sent me. 
It's quite a mercy that I knew what it was. I have tasted 
it, but await further proceedings until the arrival of Wash- 
ington Irving whom I expect to dine with me, tete-a-tete ; 



AT CINCINNATI. 145 

and who will help me to drink 3-our health. With many 
thanks to you, 

Dear sir, 

Faithfully yours, 

Charles Dickens. 
Guy, Esquire. 

It is not my intention to follow Mr. Dickens from place to 
place, but to introduce some illustrations of his journe3^ 
The Louisville Courier- Journal says that when Mr. Dickens 
came to that city during his first visit, he stopped at the 
Gait House, whose landlord, Throckmorton, was a high 
strung Southerner of much character and influence, the 
intimate of Clay, Crittenden, and all the worthies. Mr. 
Dickens had not been stopping there long when Mr. Throck- 
morton visited him and offered his services in introducing 
him to the first families in Kentucky. " Sir, are 3^ou the 
l^ublican who keeps this inn ?" inquired Mr. Dickens." Yes, 
sir." " Then, sir, when I have need of j^our services I will 
ring for you." 

A young ladj^ of Cincinnati, who made a note of it at 
the time, gives this recollection of his visit to that cit}^ : 
*' I went last evening to a party at Judge Walker's, given 
to the hero of the day, Mr. Charles Dickens, and, with 

others, had the honor of an introduction to him. M 

had gone to a concert, and we awaited her return, which 
made us late. When we reached the house, Mr, Dickens 
had left- the crowded rooms, and was in the hall, with his 
wife, about taking his departure when we entered the door. 
We were introduced to him in our wrapping, and in the 
flurry and embarrassment of the meeting one of the party 
dropped a parcel, containing shoes, gloves, etc. Mr. Dickens, 
stooping, gathered them up and restored them with a 
laughing remark, and we bounded up stairs to get our 
things off. Hastening down again, we found him with Mrs. 
Dickens, seated upon a sofa, surrounded by a group of 
ladies. Judge Walker having requested him to dela}^ his 



146 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

departure for a few moments, for the gratification of some 
tardy friends who had just arrived, ourselves among the 
number. Declining to re-enter the rooms where he had 
already taken leave of the guests, he had seated himself in 
the hall. He is young and handsome, has a mellow, beauti- 
ful eye, fine brow, and abundant hair. His mouth is large, 
and his smile so bright it seemed to shed light and happi- 
ness all about him. His manner is easy — negligent — but 
not elegant. His dress was foppish ; in fact, he was over- 
dressed, yet his garments were worn so easily they appeared 
to be a necessary part of him. He had a dark coat, with 
lighter pantaloons ; a black waistcoat, embroidered with 
colored flowers ; and about his neck, covering his white 
shirt-front, was a black neckcloth, also embroidered in 
colors, in which were placed two large diamond pins con- 
nected by a chain ; a gold watch-chain, and a large red rose 
in his button-hole, completed his toilet. Mrs. Dickens is a 
large woman, having a great deal of color, and is rather 
coarse ; but she has a good face and looks amiable. She 
seemed to think that Mr. Dickens was the attraction, and 
was perfectly satisfied to play second, happy in the know- 
ledge that she was his wife. She wore a pink silk dress, 
trimmed with a white blond flounce, and a pink cord and 
tassel wound about her head. She spoke but little, j^et 
smiled pleasantly at all that was said. He appeared a little 
weary, but answered the remarks made to him — for he 
originated none — in an agreeable manner. Mr. Beard's 
portrait of Fagin was so placed in the room that we could 
see it from where we stood surrounding him. One of the 
ladies asked him if it was his idea of the Jew. He replied, 
' Very nearly.' Another, laughingly, requested that he 
would give her the rose he wore, as a memento. He shook 
his head and said : ' That will not do ; he could not give it 
to one; the others would be jealous.' A half dozen then 
insisted on having it, whereupon he proposed to divide the 
leaves among them. In taking the rose from his coat, 



CHIEF JUSTICE ELLIS LEWIS. 147 

either by design or accident, the leaves loosened and fell 
upon the floor, and amid considerable laughter the ladies 
stooped and gathered them. He remained some twenty 
minutes, perhaps, in the hall, then took his leave. I 
must confess to considerable disappointment in the personal 
of m}^ idol. I felt that his throne was shaken, although it 
never could be destroyed." 

After disposing of the famous julep, at Baltimore, Mr. 
Dickens had proceeded westward, reaching Harrisburg 
partly b}^ railway and, partly, from York, by stage-coach. 
The mode of conveyance from Harrisburg, at that time, 
was by canal-boat, and an account of his voyage is given 
in the "American Notes." I am indebted to my friend 
Chief Justice Ellis Lewis, of Philadelphia, for an interesting 
personal reminiscence of a rencontre with Mr. Dickens, 
which he is so obliging as to permit me to publish : 

" In the year 1842, I resided in Williarasport, Lycoming 
county. I had been at Philadelphia, and on arriving from 
that city, at Buehler's Hotel, in Harrisburg, I found quite 
a crowd of people in the house, and surrounding it. The 
news was circulated that the celebrated Charles Dickens 
was at the hotel. Some alleged that he had gone to the 
Capitol to witness the proceedings of the Legislature, then 
in session. There was a great desire to get a sight of this 
distinguished man. I confess that my own desire was 
to get away from the crowd, and to avoid participating in 
the eager anxiety which our citizens generally display to 
pay court to distinguished strangers from abroad. Accord- 
ingly I went immediately to the packet boat, then lying at 
the wharf, in the canal, although its time for starting for 
Williamsport had not arrived hy several hours. I found, 
in the cabin of the boat, my old friend, Samuel R. Wood, a 
Quaker gentleman of Philadelphia, in company with a lady 
and gentleman. To these latter, my friend Wood honored 
me by an introduction. The^^ were Mr. and Mrs. Charles 
Dickens, who had come on board the packet boat, with the 



14S LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

same object which brought me there — to avoid the crowd 
and the intended display of attention. I need not say that 
I was much gratified with ray new acquaintances. 

" One circumstance, "the Chief Justice adds, ''made a deep 
impression upon my mind. It happened during our inter- 
course on board the Canal Packet Boat. I was much pleased 
with the social and genial disposition of Mr. Dickens, and was 
impressed with the great ditference which appeared to exist, 
at that early time, in their lives, between the husband and 
wife. She was good looking, plain and courteous in her man- 
ners, but rather taciturn, leaving the burthen of the conver- 
sation to fall upon her gifted husband. In the course of 
conversation I told him that I had a little daughter at home 
who would be delighted if I could present her with his auto- 
graph, written expressly for her. He consented to give it. 
Oar mutual friend, the good Quaker Warden of the Eastern 
Penitentiary, Samuel R. Wood, immediately bustled about, 
and prepared a sheet of foolscap, with pen and ink, Mr. 
Dickens took up the pen, and commencing very close to the 
top of the sheet, wrote : 

'Yours faithfully, Charles Dickens.' 

Mr. Wood remarked ' Thee begins very close to the top 
of the sheet.' ' Yes,' said Mr. D., 'if I left a large blank 
over my name somebod3^ might write a note or a bond over 
it.' ' Does thee suppose that a Judge of the Court would 
do such a thing ?' said Mr. Wood. Mr. D. replied ' I did 
not intimate any thing of that kind. The paper might soon 
pass out of the Judge's possession, and be made use of by 
others. But I do not suppose that Judges of Courts in 
America are any better men than the Judges in England.' 
This autograph was written for my daughter Juliet, and 
was delivered to her. She is the wife of the Hon. James H. 
Campbell, formerly member of Congress from Schuylkill 
and Northumberland counties, recently American Minister 
to Sweden, and now residing in Philadelphia." 



NOTE TO HON. ELLIS LEWIS. 149 

The practice of writing the signature quite close to the top 
of the paper was begun, I have heard, by Talleyrand. 

Mr. Lewis adds, " Twenty-five years afterwards, Mr. Dick- 
ens again visited this country, and gave us the benefits of 
his own readings of juany of the sketches and scenes to be 
found in his works. Our citizens generally called on him 
to pay their respects. In my feeble state of health, I was 
unable either to attend any of his readings, or to call on him, 
in order to pay m}?- great respects to him, and to bear my 
testimon}" to his usefulness and the great benefits which, as 
a writer, he had rendered to the citizens of this country. I 
therefore sent him my card, with a short note, calling to 
mind our pleasant trip up the Susquehanna in the canal 
packet. It will serve to show his kind and genial disposi- 
tion as well as the strength of his memory, to subjoin his 
reply to m}^ letter. This I have accordingly done." 

Mr. Dickens's letter is as follows : 

Westminster Hotel, New York, 

Saturday, Eighteenth January, 1868. 
My Dear Sir : — I have received your kind letter with 
sincere interest and pleasure, and I beg to thank you for 
it cordially. The occasion you bring back to my remem- 
brance is as fresh and vivid as though it were of 3'esterday. 
Accept from me the accumulated good wishes of five and 
twenty years, and believe me, my dear sir, 
Faithfully Yours, 

Charles Dickens. 
The Hon. Ellis Lewis. 



150 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER XL 

AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. — PICKWICK 
READINGS AT A WHITE-SMITH'S. — RECEPTION OF THE NOTES IN 
ENGLAND. — OTHER TOURISTS. — CHANGE FOR THE NOTES. — 
LORD JEFFREY'S OPINION. — MARTIN CIIUZZLEWIT. — CRUSADE 

AGAINST SELFISHNESS ENGLISH CRITICISMS. — CHRISTMAS 

CAROL AND ITS FOLLOWERS.^— JOURNEY TO ITALY. 

" He fell at Waterloo," was the short and severe criticism 
of a reviewer upon a poem, which, with his accustomed 
facility, Scott dashed off, soon after he had visited the arena, 
on which, on the 18th of June, 1815, the famous and wonderful 
" Hundred Daj's" reign of the escaped prisoner of Elba, long 
the Dictator of Europe, closed his career in a hurricane of 
tumultuous strife and defeat. Scott hurried over to Belgium, 
after the great battle, in which the star of Napoleon set. 
One of the results of that visit, was a hasty poem, " The 
Field of Waterloo," altogether unworthy of the subject and 
of his own genius, which, though it sold far better than 
" Rokeby" or " The Lord of the Isles," was a poor perform- 
ance — for Scott. 

America, it must be confessed, was Dickens's Waterloo. 
He returned to England in the summer of 1842, and pro- 
ceeded, with more rapidity than judgment, to write two 
volumes of " American Notes for General Circulation," 
which were published by Chapman & Hall, 186 Strand, Lon- 
don, and were in a second edition, in a few weeks, though 
the price was a guinea, and, besides not having illustrations, 
which had remarkabl}^ given almost tangible reality to his 
previous works, contained little more than a third of the 
quantity of letter-press in Pickwick or Nicklehy. These, 
published in monthly shilling numbers, had been chiefly 



PENNY READINGS OF PICKWICK. 151 

purchased by the middle and the working classes, but the 
American tour, at a high price, went almost exclusively into 
the hands of the " higher" classes. The public at large had 
to do without it, or hire it, at sixpence or a shilling for two 
or three da37s, from the circulating libraries, which had al- 
most coined mone}^ by lending Pickwick and Nicklehy at a 
penny per number for a day's reading. I remember when I 
lived in Liverpool, having a small job to be done, — the pick- 
ing of a lock, in default of a lost ke}^ — and went to the lodg- 
ing of a white-smith, as he was called, to engage his skill 
for a few minutes. I found him reading Pichwick, then in 
course of publication, to an audience of twenty persons, 
literally men, women, and children, and found that as they 
could not afford the' shilling to purchase each number, out 
and out, they hired it, month after month, from a circula- 
ting library, which let them read it, at the rate of two pence 
a day. There come up before me, after a lapse of thirty- 
three 3'ears, the ringing merriment of that audience, "few 
but fitting," their thorough enjoj^ment of Sam Weller's 
quaint language, and their ready tears as the white-smith, 
who read with great judgment and feeling, told them of the 
death of the poor Chancery prisoner, in the Fleet. There 
was no such eager audience for the American Notes. 

The general complaint was that the author told very lit- 
tle that was new about the United States. Some critics de- 
clared that the book might have been written, four-fifths of 
it, without Mr. Dickens having quitted his library in London. 
At that time, nearly thirty years ago, there had recently 
been published many books about America. Hamilton, 
Marryat, and Tyrone Power had been at work, and Frances 
TroUope, Fanny Kemble, and Harriet Martin eau had writ- 
ten on the subject with great spirit and effect, as well as in 
a satirical and discontented vein. The female writers on 
America were more or less saucy, but Miss Martineau, at- 
tempting to be philosophical as well, was only heavy. Fanny 
Kemble was severe and flippant, complaining so bitterly 



152 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

of the inconveniences of travel and the deficiencies of toilet 
appliances at the hotels, that one might have imagined her 
to have been at least a Countess in her own right, instead 
of a " stage-actor," whom the chambermaids of the caravan- 
serai might have seen, flashing in her mock jewelry, as 
tragedy-queen or comedy-heroine, on payment of a shilling 
at the gallery-door of a play house. Mr. Dickens, coming 
after her, only echoed what she had said about the mys- 
teries and miseries of the toilette ; the want of water, 
towels, and soap ; the horror of narrow and hard beds on 
board steamers and canal boats ; the poor breakfasts and 
rough dinners ; the tobacco-chewing and the spitting, and 
so on. But what might have anno3^ed a woman, should have 
been tolerated by a man, who went travelling, accompanied 
by his wife, into all sorts of out-of-the-way places. He dedi- 
cated his book "to those friends in America who had left 
his judgment free, and who loving their country, can bear 
the truth when it is told good humoredly and in a kind 
spirit." 

In fact, however, it was not so much writing his book in 
a satirical and dissatisfied manner, but writing it at all, which 
was Mr. Dickens's great mistake. With all his popularity, 
as a novelist, his readers did not desire to have his views of 
America and her society, and did not think that he was 
particularly qualified or called upon to present them. He 
would have done better if he had not written a page about 
America. He had fallen into the habit of looking at every 
thing from burlesque and grotesque points of view, like the 
familiar diner-out, who never allows anything to be said or 
done without trying to make a pun upon it. Some of his 
facetious passages are very good, but when he tried to be 
didactic and philosophical, he rarely succeeded. His re- 
marks upon the legislature in Washington were coarse and 
even scurrilous ; — what would he have said had an eminent 
American man of letters, say Washington Irving, have used 
language only half so disparaging of the British Lords and 



AMERICAN NOTES. 153 

Commons ? His declaration against slavery, though he 
never went farther south than Virginia, was fearless and 
direct. His instincts as a freeman were very strong against 
a system which, let us all, whether of North or South, thank 
God is now forever ended. There are many odds and ends 
of description scattered throughout the "American Notes," 
which are in the author's best manner. It was received, in 
America, with a hurricane of disapprobation. Mr. Dickens 
was reminded, not quite fairly, that his was not a mere re- 
ception but a great ovation in thecoantr3^he had " handled 
without gloves," and was told that he was therefore ungrate- 
ful as well as unjust. A reply, entitled "Change for Ameri- 
can Notes," was hurried through the press, but it was feebly 
written, besides being illustrated, not embellished, by 
several portraits, apparently engraved in the infancy of the 
art. This had few readers in England, and has long and 
deservedl}' been forgotten. It was a memorable instance 
of zeal acting without discretion. 

When Mr. Dickens re-published his book in 1S50, in his 
People's edition, he did not withdraw a word of it. " Pre- 
judiced, I am not," he said, " otherwise than in favor of the 
United States." In 1868, when he saw the country, after 
twenty-five years, during which it had worked out " a prob- 
lem of the highest importance to the whole human race," 
be candidly confessed that he had originally taken an incor- 
rect impression of it. His ample retractation may be said 
to have closed the account between the Americans and him- 
self, leaving a handsome balance in his favor. 

The English critics did not think favorably of the "Amer- 
ican Notes," and maliciousl}^ said that Mr. Dickens ap- 
peared to have availed himself of a hint given by Mr. Weller 
senior, in Pickwick, to " have a passage ready taken for 
'Merriker ; and then let him come back and write a book 
about the 'Merrikins, as '11 pay all his expenses and more, if he 
blows 'em up enough." Mr. Dickens did accomplish one 
part of this prediction, for Lord Jeffre}^ speaks of a sale of 



154 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

3000 copies, and author's profit of £1,000 within the first 
few months. Lord Jeffrey, on his first perusal, compli- 
mented him highly, saying, " You have been very tender to 
our sensitive friends beyond sea, and really said nothing 
which should give any serious oflTence to any moderately 
rational patriot among them," and declared that "the world 
has never yet seen a more faithful, graphic, amusing, kind- 
hearted narrative than you have now bestowed upon it." 
But later, in December 1843, when praising the Christmas 
Carol, he adds " is not this better than caricaturing Ameri- 
can knaveries ? " 

To recover the prestige thus jeopardized, rather than 
lost, a new serial work was begun in 1843. This was The 
Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzleiuit, dedicated to 
Miss Burdett Coutts. As usual, this tale had a deliberate 
purpose underl3dng the adventures. The object was to 
expose the vice of Selfishness in various forms, and, in 
some instances, to exhibit its vices. In the Preface to the 
first edition, the author said : 

I set out, on this journey which is now concluded, with 
the design of exhibiting, in various aspects, the commonest 
of all the vices. It is almost needless to add, tliat the 
commoner the folly or the crime which an author endeavors 
to illustrate, the greater is the risk he runs of being charged 
with exaggeration ; for, as no man ever yet recognized an 
imitation of himself, no man will admit the correctness of a 
sketch in which his own character is delineated, however 
faithfully. 

Young Martin Chuzzlewit, the hero, is one of the most 
masterly and best sustained characters ever created by 
Dickens. He has many good qualities, is strong in love 
and friendship, is not devoid of generosit3% but so intensely 
selfish that his sacrifices are not for love or friendship, but 
solely to contribute to his own comfort. J^Tark Taple}', 
who has a large share in working out this young gentle- 
man's cure, though not without passing him through the 



MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. 155 

ordeal of poverty and suffering, may be considered as his 
moral antipode. Mr. Pecksniff, with his children, repre- 
sents falsity and pretence, hypocrisy and humbug. Directly 
opposed to Pecksniff is inimitable Tom Pinch, who appears 
as if he had been born chiefly for the purpose of being 
imi^osed ^upon, but comes out, at the close, rewarded and 
happy. His secret passion for his friend's sweetheart is 
most delicately developed, without being made too promi- 
nent. The Chuzzlewit family, at large, are clearly drawn 
and forcibly distinguished. Ruth Pinch, the little gov- 
erness, who is finally converted into Mrs. John Westlock, 
is a "pure and perfect chrysolite," whom a monarch might 
have worn, proudly and gladl}^, next his very heart of heart. 
We must admit that Jonas Chuzzlewit, the chief villain of 
the tale, is equal, in his wa}^ to Sikes, Sir Mulberry Hawis:, 
or Quilp, but the darker scenes in which he figures are 
rather obscure and involved. He believes that he has poi- 
soned his father — which he did not. He murders Mon- 
tague Tigg, who has the secret of his presumed guilt — 
thus committing a real crime to conceal an imaginary one. 
But the whole description of that fatal deed, from the com- 
mencement of the ill-omened journe}^ in the post-chaise to his 
return home, with detection and suicide, is as powerful as 
anything written by this great master, or by any other hand. 
Mrs. Lupin, Mark Tapley, and young Bailey, are finely 
drawn, and Mrs. Todgers, who kept a boarding-house, and 
had a tender heart withal, could not be dispensed with. As 
for Sairey Gamp and Betsey Prig, to say nothing of that 
celebrated myth, Mrs. Harris, they have become house- 
hold words. Chuzzlewit, dramatized under Mr. Dickens's 
own supervision, was played at the Lyceum Theatre, in the 
season of 1844, the part of the Nurse by Mr. Robert 
Keeley, and was very successful. 

It was declared by some of the writers, that Chuzzlewit 
was inferior in style to the preceding tales. There were such 
expressions as " It had not been painted or papered, hadn't 



156 LIFE OF CIIAELES DICKENS. 

Todger's, past memory of man ;" " She was the most 
artless creature, was the youngest Miss Pecksniff ; " 
" Nature played them off against each other ; they had no 
hand in it, the two Miss Pecksniffs ;" and so on. Mr Dick- 
ens spoke of imiwacticahle nightcaps, impossible tables and 
exploded chests of drawers, mad closets, inscrutable harp- 
sichords, undeniable chins, highly geological home-made 
cakes, remote suggestions of tobacco lingering within a spit- 
toon, and the recesses and vacations of a tooth-pick. Then 
it was complained that there was too much of the drunken 
humors of Jonas, and Chevy Slime, and Pecksniff, and Mrs. 
Gamp, and Mrs. Prig. It was noticed, bnt scarcely com- 
plained of, that when some of the characters had nothing 
else to do they indulged in kissing, such as Martin kissing 
Mary in the park ; Mark kissing Mrs. Lupin, ad libitum, on 
the night of his return to the Blue Dragon; Pecksniff 
kissing Mary ; Martin kissing Mary in Pecksniff' 's parlor; 
John Westlock kissing Fvuth ; Martin kissing Mary the 
third time, and so on. 

When the author reviewed, or at least re-read, this book 
for the People's edition, he added these sentences to the 
Preface : 

In all the tales comprised in this cheap series, and in all 
my writings, I hope 1 have taken every possible opportunity 
of showing the want of sanitary improvements in the 
neglected dwellings of the poor. Mrs. Sarah Gamp is a 
representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sick- 
ness. The hospitals of London are, in man}^ respects, noble 
Institutions ; in others, ver}'- defective. I think it not the 
least among the instances of their mismanagement, that 
Mrs. Betsy Prig is a fair specimen of a Hospital Nurse; 
and that the hospitals, with their means and funds, should 
have left it to private humanity and enterprise, in the year 
Eighteen Hundred and Forty -nine, to enter on an attempt 
to improve that class of persons. 

One portion of Chuzzlewit gave great pain to most of its 
home, and raised great anger among many of its foreign 



VINDICATION. 157 

readers. Without any very clear or ostensible purpose, Mr. 
Dickens brought his hero, with Mark Tapley as ^ squire, 
over to the United States, where, in the guise of a fictitious 
narrative, he repeated a good deal of what had been con- 
sidered unfair aud prejudiced in the American Notes. It is 
right that his own explanation, as originally published in 
1850, and again in 1867, should here be given: 

The American portion of this book is in no other respect a 
caricature than as it is an exhibition, for the most part, of the 
ludicrous side of the American character — of that side which 
is, from its very nature, the most obtrusive, and the most 
likely to be seen by such travellers as Young Martin and 
Mark Tapley. As I have never, in writing fiction, had any 
disposition to soften what is ridiculous or wrong at home, 
I hope (and believe) that the good-humored people of the 
United States are not generally disposed to quarrel with 
me for carrying the same usage abroad. But 1 have been 
given to understand, by some authorities, that there are 
American scenes in these pages which are violent exaggera- 
tions ; and that the Watertoast Association and eloquence, 
for example, are beyond all bounds of belief. Now, I wish 
to record the fact that all that portion of Martin Chuzzle- 
wit's American experiences is a literal paraplirase of some 
reports of public proceedings in the United States (especially 
of the proceedings of a certain Brand\'wine Association), 
which were printed in the Times newspaper in June and 
July, 1843 — at about the time when I was engaged in 
writing those parts of the book. There were at that 
period, on the part of a frothy Young American party, 
demonstrations making of " sympatliy " towards Ireland 
and hostility towards England, in which such outrageous 
absurdities ran rampant, that, having the occasion read}^ to 
my hand, I ridiculed them. And this I did, not in any 
animosity towards America, but just as I should have done 
the same thing, if the same opportunity had arisen in 
reference to London, or Dublin, or Paris, or Devonshire. 

Miss Mitford, writing to that Irish friend to whom she 
had introduced Mr, Pickwick some years before, said : " I 
like Dickens's Christmas Carol, too, very much — not the 

10 



158 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

ghostly part, of course, which is very bad ; but the scenes 
of the clerk's family are very fine and touching." That 
story had been published in December, 1843, in a five 
shilling Ifimo. volume, with a few illustrations, designed 
by John Leech, engraved on steel and colored. Its full title 
was "A Christmas Carol: In Prose. Being a Ghost 
Story of Christmas." Its success was immense. Once 
again, the great author had struck into a new vein of great- 
est value. Lord Jeffrey was in raptures over the new 
story. He wrote, " we are all charmed with your Carol, 
chiefly, I think, for the genuine goodness which breathes all 
through it, and is the true inspiring angel by which its 
genius has been awakened. The w^hole scene of the 
Cratchetts is like the dream of a beneficent angel in spite 
of its broad realit}^ — and little Tiny Tim, in life and death 
almost as sweet and as touching as Nelly. And then the 
schoolboy scene, with that large-hearted, delicate sister, 
with his gall-lacking liver and milk of human-kindness for 
blood, and yet all so natural and so humbly and serenely 
happy." There were other Christmas stories, one in each of 
four succeeding 3^ears, but none of them were so much liked 
as the first. These are " The Chimes : A Goblin Story 
of some Bells that rang an Old Year out and a New Year 
in," which Jeffrey praised, though he " did not care about 
3^our twaddling Alderman [Cute] and his twaddling friends ;" 
"The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home," 
which has been repeatedly dramatized, in England and 
America ; " The Battle of Life : a Love Story ;" and " The 
Haunted Man, and the Ghost's Bargain." Of these, only the 
first and third had very great success. The Cratchett 
Family alone would have saved an}^ story, and little " Dot," 
in the other tale, contained all the elements of popularity. 
In fact, the supernatural, which forms the woof of these 
tales, was not well managed — may have been unmanage- 
able. Mr. Dickens thought otherwise, for he persevered in 
its use for several years. His own statement is : 



CHRISTMAS STORIES. 159 

The narrow space within which it was necessary to con- 
fine these Christmas stories when they were originally 
published, rendered their construction a matter of some 
difficulty, and almost necessitated what is peculiar in their 
machinery. I never attempted great elaboration of detail 
in the w^orking out of characters within such limits, believ- 
ing that it would not succeed. My purpose was, in a 
whimsical kind of masque which the good-humor of the 
season justified, to awaken some loving and fostering 
thought, never out of season in a Christian land. 

Of The Christmas Gay^ol there was a highly eulogistic 
review in The Times, w^hich said, " we confess that the 
beauty of this 'ghost story,' and the freshness that per- 
vaded it, took us by surprise. The spirit of the writer had 
manifestly grown more elastic, relieved from the pressure 
of former labors. His heart had helped him to work out an 
idea naturally suggested — it may be during a morning's 
walk, — not painfully and artificially forged at the author's 
furnace. The Carol was a short tale * of the aflTections,' 
simple and truthful as one of Wordsworth's poems." The 
same critic was severe upon The Chimes, on the ground 
that its tendency was mischievous. It said, " it may be a 
painful task to pronounce a verdict of condemnation upon 
the labors of one who, in his time, has afforded the public 
very much amusement; but it is also a necessary task to 
warn the public of the faults and errors of a teacher uni- 
versally listened to — of a writer whom popularity has in- 
vested with the qualities of a model and a guide. It is the 
literary tendency of the present age to write downwards 
rather than upivards — to adapt art to the calibre of the 
lowest capacities, rather than to elevate the intellect by ac- 
customing it to nervous, healthy exercise. The class of 
books which formed the recreation of the leisure hours of our 
fathers — the light reading of their time — is to-day the mind's 
sole occupation. Our lightest reading is the solidest ; the 
amusement of the mind is its business ; ethics are taught 
by illustration and caricature; knowledge is conveyed in a 



100 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

joke ; conversation is carried on in slang ; the drama under- 
takes to purify the heart and understanding by burlesque, 
whilst the modern epic positively refuses every hero that is 
not drawn from the purlieus of the workhouse or the prison. 
Unrivalled as is the power possessed by Mr. Dickens of de- 
lineating the characters and imitating the language of the 
humblest section of humble life, it cannot be denied by his 
warmest admirers that the direction given to public taste, 
and the unhealthy character of our current literature, are 
mainly owing to a vicious though brilliant example, rewarded 
with extreme success, and sustained by morbid appetite." 
Above all, the repetition of the fairy machinery was ob- 
jected to, because of " the lamentable result that attends all 
the repetitions of the writer. That which was at first easy 
and to the purpose became monstrous, overcharged, and out 
of place." The reviewer hit the chief blot in the story 
thus : 

This amiable gentleman [Tackleton] fascinated the blind 
daughter of his journeyman [Caleb Plumer] and almost 
breaks her heart by courting somebody else. The journey- 
man is an extraordinary fellow in his way, and has brought 
up his child to think Tackleton a saint, and the den in which 
they live a palace. So, Mr. Dickens, are not the blind 
misled ! Exquisite are the spared senses, merciful!}' strength- 
ened b}' Providence to make amends for the one tremendous 
deprivation. The fingers of the blind read the Bible ; the 
ears of the blind — the figure is a bold one — see the 
friendh^ visitor long before you or I, even whilst his foot is 
lino-erino: at the threshold; Would you have us believe that 
touch, feeling, hearing, remained for twenty 3'ears torpid 
and dead in the sensitive creature whom you have spoiled 
by your perversion ? We tell 3'ou, and not without good 
warrant for the assertion, that no man living, journej'man 
or master, has power to stop up the avenues through which 
knowledge rushes to the soul of a poor innocent deprived of 
sight. Bertha, by your own account, had mixed in the world ; 
she talked wisely and even profoundl^^ on abstruse matters ; 
she worked with her father ; she knew every to}^ in the room, 
and where to seek it, and how to make it; she was in daily 



GEORGE CEU IK SHANK. IfJ 

intercourse with those who knew the character of Tackleton 
and who spoke of him with freedom. And yet you ask us 
to believe that this young lass, all feeling and perception, 
never knew *' that walls were blotched and bare of plaster 
here and there ; that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper 
peeling off; that sorrow and faint-heaitedness were in the 
house ; that they had a master cold, exacting and interested." 
If we believe you, it must be when Nature proves a liar. 

In 1844, on the completion of Martin GhuzzJewit, Mr. 
Dickens, with his wife and children, two boys and two girls, 
proceeded to Italy, where they resided for a 3'ear. I shall 
take advantage of their voluntary exile, to mention a few 
facts concerning the illustrations to Mr. Dickens'is works, 
and the artists who executed them. 



CHAPTER XII. 

RELATIONS WITH ARTISTS. — GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. — TOM AND 

JERRY. — HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS BROUGHT TO LONDON. 

RE-PURCHASING COPYRIGHTS. — ROBERT SEYMOUR'S SKETCHES. 

SUCCEEDED BY "PHIZ." THE AUTHOR'S LAST HISTOllY OP 

PICKWICK. — THE PALAZZO PESCHIERE IN GENOA. — KIND 
DEALINGS WITH AN ARTIST. — UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM 
CHARLES DICKENS. 

The relations, personal as well as professional, between 
Charles Dickens and leading artists, were always of the 
most satisfactory nature. He went into general society, 
rather as a duty to his family and position, but his heart 
was with such artists, authors, and actors as were well 
known to and highly regarded by him. 

Mr. Dickens was fortunate, at the beginning of his career, 
in the aid of such an artist as George Cruikshank, who 
designed and etched thirty-nine characteristic illustrations 
for the Sketches by "Boz," published in 1835-6, in thice 



1G2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

volumes. Criiikshank, who is now nearly eighty years old, 
was about forty-three when he met Dickens, and, as an 
illustrator of books, was in such request that he not only 
obtained his own prices, but ^vas compelled, at times, to 
refuse commissions. He had obtained celebrity before 
Dickens was born, for I have a colored caricature, from his 
hurin, published in The Scovrge, as early as the year 180S. 
He had an elder brother, Robert Isaac Cruikshank, who 
had some ability, but was a far inferior artist, — his stvle in 
fact, much resembling that of Robert Seymour, whom we 
shall presently meet. In 1820-1, during tlie trial of Queen 
Caroline, George Cruikshank worked with remarkable 
cleverness, fancy, and facility on the popular side. Such 
productions as " The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder," " The 
Queen that Jack Found," and similar squibs, were largely 
sold then and now are "worth their weight in gold." He 
was the artist, too, of Pierce Egan's "Life in London," a 
worthless book, full of slang and coarseness, in which were 
related the adventures, sprees, and varied dissipations of a 
brace of bucks, called Tom and Jerry, who undertook to 
show "life" (as they called it) to a greenhorn rejoicing in 
the pastoral surname of Hawthorne. There was a certain 
Corinthian Kate who participated in their adventures. The 
work, very badly written, came out in numbers, and had 
surprising popularity. Men and women actually dressed 
after the characters, and when the chapters were adapted to 
the stage, the fortune of the manager of the theatre was 
made in the single season of their remarkable success. Mr. 
Thackeray, in whose youth " Tom and Jerry" had appeared, 
has repeatedly referred to it in his writings. 

Cruikshank, who flourishes, in a green old age, and is one 
of the leaders of the Temperance movement in London, was 
by no means a caricaturist, though he has been classed with 
Gilray, Bunbury, and Rowlandson. "My Sketch Book," 
" Points of Humor," and " Illustrations of Phrenology" 
were noticed with the highest praise and in extenso, by 



OLIVER TWIST. 163 

Christopher North, in Blaclcivood^s Magazine, and, not long 
before the appearance of Mr. Dickens among that "noble 
arm}^ of martja's," the authors by profession, Cruikshank had 
designed and engraved a series of illustrations of Fielding, 
SmoUet, and Goldsmith, in Roscoe's Novelist's Library, 
which gave him the highest position as what may be called 
a book-artist. From his boyish daj^s, Cruikshank had been 
familiar with all the varieties and phases of middle life and 
low life in London. It was said of him that you could not 
name a lane or alley in the Modern Babylon, the locality 
of which he could not instantly describe. He w^as the true 
''guide, philosopher, and friend" for Charles Dickens, and 
both were the very men to produce, with pen and pencil, the 
" Sketches of English Life and Character," which bore 
the now familiar nom de plume of " I3oz" upon the title- 
page. 

Pickwick, which followed the Sketches, was not illustrated 
by Cruikshank, from causes to be presently stated, but 
while it was yet in course of serial publication, its author 
having become editor of Bentley^s Miscellany, his arrange- 
ment was that Cruikshank should illustrate Oliver Twist, 
the new story which he begun in February, 183Y, in that 
magazine. Accordingly, < also supplying a couple of en- 
gravings for Ma3^or Tulrumble and the Mudfog Association, 
which Mr. Dickens published in Bentley"^) he executed de- 
signs for Oliver Twist, and very effective they are. At this 
place properly may be introduced a curious bit of literary 
histor}'. 

The seventh chapter of Oliver Twist ends with the flight 
of the parish boy, from the dwelling of Mr. Sowerberry, the 
undertaker, and that terrible beadle, Mr. Bumble, and his 

* The "Personal Adventures of Mr. Tulrumble," never re-pub- 
lished by Mr. Dickens, may be found in Petersons' editions of tlie 
Sketches, and "The Proceedings of the Mudfog Association" are in 
the present volume, not having been previously reprinted in Eng- 
land or America 



lU LIFE OF CIIAPvLES DICKENS. 

bidding farewell to his poor little friend Dick, the parochial 
orphan, to whom he saj^s, " I am running away. They beat 
and ill-use me, Dick ; and I am going to seek m}^ fortune 
some long way off, I don't know where." At the opening 
of the eighth chapter, however, Oliver is on his way to 
London ; and before its close he is an inmate of Fagin the 
Jew, and companion of that free-and-eas^woung gentleman, 
Mr. John Dawkins (commonly known as the " Artful 
Dodger "), and a few other choice but youthful aspirants of 
the same school. When the Quarterly Bevieio criticised 
the book, it said that Mr. Dickens had made a great mis- 
take in not keeping Oliver Twist in the country, instead of 
taking him to the thieves' haunts in London, which had been 
described over and over again. 

I have been informed that Dickens originally intended 
to carry out the promise of his title {Oliver Twist ; or The 
Parish Boy^s Progress) and to trace the life, struggles and 
successes of what Miss Braddon calls ** a clod," — to locate 
him in Kent, the county best beloved by himself, at all 
times, and to introduce hop-picking, and other picturesque 
ruralties. He changed his purpose, as we all know, and 
brought him to London. George Cruikshank told me 
how this was done. 

In London, I was intimate with the brothers Cruikshank, 
Robert and George, but more particularly with the latter. 
In 184t, having called upon him one day at his house (it then 
was in Mydleton Terrace, Pentonville), I had to wait while 
he was finishing an etching for which a printer's boy was 
waiting. To wile away the time, I gladly complied with 
his suggestion that I should look over a portfolio crowded 
with etchings, proofs, and drawings, which Xay upon the 
sofa. Among these, carelessly tied together in a wrajD of 
brown paper, was a series of some twenty- five to thirty 
drawings, very carefully finished, through most of which 
were carried the now well-known portiaits of Fagin, Bill 
Sikes and his dog, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and Master 



FAGIN IN THE CONDEMNED CELL. 165 

Charles Bates — all well known to the readers of Oliver 
Ticist — and many others who were not introduced. There 
was no mistake about it, and when Cruikshank turned 
round, his work finished, I said as much. He told me that 
it had long been in his mind to show the life of a London 
thief by a series of drawings, engraved by himself, in 
which, without a single line of letter-press, the story would 
be strikingly and clearly told. " Dickens," he continued, 
"dropped in here one da3^just as you have done, and, while 
waiting until I could speak with him, took up that identical 
portfolio and ferreted out that bundle of drawings. When 
he came to that one which represents Fagin in the Con- 
demned Cell, he silently studied it for half an hour, and told 
me that he was tempted to change the whole plot of his story ; 
not to carry Oliver Twist through adventures in the country, 
but to take him up into the thieves' den in London, show 
what their life was, and bring Oliver safely through it 
without sin or shame. I consented to let him write up to 
as many of the designs as he thought would suit his pur- 
pose ; and that was the way in which Fagin, Sikes, and 
Nancy were created. My drawings suggested them, rather 
than his strong individuality suggested my drawings." 

It has been stated by Mr. Mayhew, that when Cruikshank 
was designing Fagin in the Condemned Cell, he made 
various attempts to produce the required effect of terror, 
hatred, and despair, but did not succeed, until, one morning, 
as he was sitting up in bed, gnawing his nails, as he used 
to do when he found himself at a nonplus, he caught a view 
of his own face reflected in a pier-glass opposite, and, 
jumping out of bed, on the moment, went to work on his 
sketch. He had got the position and the expression he 
wanted. 

Before quitting Oliver Twist, I may mention that when 
Bulwer wished to purchase the interest his publisher had 
in two of his novels, (" Eugene Aram " and " Paul Clif- 
ford," I believe,) the question was referred to arbitration, 



106 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

and he had to pay £750. In the same time, and for the 
same purpose, Mr. Dickens purchased Mr. Bentley's share 
in Oliver Tiuist. This work had prosperously launched 
BeMley^s Miscellany on the popular tide, and, republished 
in the usual three-volume edition, had sold very largely. 
By mutual consent, Mr. John Forster was appointed co- 
yakier, with Mr. William Jerdan of the Litey^ary Gazette, 
to ascertain what Mr. Bentley's interest in the said Oliver 
Twist Xvas worth, and they fixed the amount at £2,250, 
which Mr. Dickens handed over to Mr. Bentley, receiving 
for that large sum, a written surrender of copyright inter- 
est, and the steel plates on which George Cruikshank had 
etched his admirable illustrations. In both of these cases, 
the authors had to pay. In 1818, however, the case was 
reversed. Walter Scott obtained £12,000 for his cop^^right 
in seven of the Waverlej^ Novels, and his share in the copy- 
right of some of his poems. Constable, the publisher, 
was the person who agreed to pay this large sum, for which 
he gave bonds. But, in 1826, when Constable failed, the 
loliole amount of these bonds not having been paid to 
Scott, his entire interest in the copja-ight reverted to him — 
rather according to law than justice, for he had received a 
large portion of the money. 

Leaving George Cruikshank, we now come to another 
artist who, under the sobriquet of " Phiz" was longer and 
later associated with Mr. Dickens. A correspondent of the 
N. Y. Tribune, whose general accuracy I have to acknowl- 
edge, gives the following detailed account of the beginning 
of Mr. Dickens's long connection with Chapman & Hall, 
the publishers, at whose suggestion, as I have mentioned in 
a preceding chapter, he undertook to write the Pickwick 
Papers. It is as follows : 

Early in the year 1836, Messrs. Chapman & Hall, who a 
few years previously were both engaged in the once famous 
publishing-house oi' Baldwin & Cradock, were established 
as booksellers and publishers in the Strand, London ; and 



ORIGIN OF PICKWICK. ICT 

among tlieir literary ventures then in preparation was a 
magazine to be illustrated and sold for one sliilling, and to 
be called The Library of Fiction. It was to be filled with 
short stories and sketches by the popular authors of the 
day, and was under the editorial charge of Mr. Charles 
AAHiitehead, a litterateur of the period. In making a selec- 
tion of authors who were to be requested to contribute to 
the work, Mr. Chapman called Mr. Whitehead's attention to 
the ** Sketches" then being published under the signature of 
" Boz" in The Monthly Ilagazine and in The Morning Chron- 
icle, and desired that he should be applied to for contribu- 
tions. " His name is Dickens, and I know where to find 
him," was the editor's repl3^ Mr. Dickens acceded to the 
request, and contributed to the new serial " Tlie Tuggs at 
Ramsgate," with which the initial number opened, and which 
was eventually contained in the collected edition of 
"Sketches by Boz," published by the same house. Such 
was Mr. Dickens's first engagement to write for the pub- 
lishers with whom he was afterwards so closel3^ connected. 

Shortly before this time Mr. Se3anour, whose humorous 
etchings of cocknc}'' life and character were then very pop- 
ular, had partly arranged with Messrs Chapman & Hall for 
the publication of a new series of etchings of a like nature, 
to be accompanied by illustrative letter-press, and issued in 
monthly numbers at one shilling ; and in view of the publi- 
cation, an author of the day, whose name is known to the 
writer, was written to and requested to undertake the literary 
department of the work, but he never replied to the appli- 
cation. When The Library of Fiction was under Vv'a}^, Sey- 
mour called upon the publishers, and urged that his proposed 
work should be proceeded with at once, or if not he should 
be compelled to engage upon other labors he had oflTered to 
him, but which he did not so much fan C}^ Mr. Chapman 
told Seymour that as he had no reply from the author re- 
ferred to, he would at once call upon Dickens, and ascertain 
if he would be willing to write the descriptive letter-press. 
He fulfilled his mission, and w^as gratified to find that the 
young author entered enthusiastically into the scheme, sug- 
gesting a modification of the plan, and promised to let him 
have the copy for a prospectus of the work on the following 
da}^ which promise he fulfilled. This is the visit alluded to 
by Mr. Dickens in his preface. 

Many works had just then been issued with either the 
name of the author appearing on the title-page under the 



168 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

guise of editor, or, when they were from the pens of unknown 
writers, under the editorial sponsorship of well-I^nown 
authors, and it was decided tliat the new book should follow 
in the wake, and it consequently appeared as "edited by 
Boz." The title was written out by Mr. Chapman, and was 
scarcely altered except in the leading word, that of " Nim- 
rod" having, as Mr. Dickens asserts, been first proioosed. 
A better name was soon found. 



Robert Seymour was much inferior, in imagination, humor, 
and execution, to George Cruikshank and others. His etch- 
ings on copper or steel were coarse when not scratchy, and, 
for the most part, he drew his designs on stone, for the lith- 
ographer. His best productions were in the sporting line ; 
burlesques, in which cockney sportsmen made ludicrous 
blunders. I remember an exception to this, which appeared 
Ions: before Pickwick, and had o-reat success. It was a series 
of designs, published monthly, in shilling duodecimo parts, 
with the title of "New Readings of Old Authors." They 
were roughly drawn and carelessly lithographed, but some 
of them exhibited genuine humor. 

When Seymour began drawing for the Pickwick Papers, 
he was in feeble health, the result of general poverty and 
irregular habits ; he was fond of his wife and children, but 
could not resist the temptation of drink. For Pickwick, 
he supplied only four engravings in all. These are : 1. Mr. 
Pickwick addressing the Club, in which the old gentleman, 
supported by Tupman, Winkle, and Snodgrass, stands upon 
a Windsor chair, with one hand covered by his coat-tails, 
while he anathemizes unfortunate Mr. Blotton — his oppo- 
nent. 2. Mr. Pickwick and the pugnacious Cabman. 3. 
The sagacious dog, who, seeing a notice that " The game- 
keeper had orders to shoot dogs found in this enclosure," 
turns tail, and refuses to follow a cockney sparrow-shooter 
into a field — this is in Seymour's best style. 4. The Hying 
Clown, which is a poor performance, in all respects. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Seymour died by his own hand, just 



SEYMOUR'S SKETCHES. 1C9 

at the time when it aj^peared as if better clays were at hand. 
Mr Thackerary has told how, then striving to live rather 
by his pencil than pen, he had called on Mr. Dickens at 
Furnival's Inn, and, soliciting employment as artist to Pick- 
ivick, showed some sketches which did not get him the ap- 
pointment. The artist who did was Mr. Hablot Knight 
Browne, some three years younger than Mr. Dickens, and 
like him, living at the time en garcon, "in chambers" at 
Furnival's Inn. He was known to Mr. Dickens, having 
ilhistrated his little work on Sunday in London, of which I 
have given some account in an earlier chapter. His pseu- 
donym was *' Phiz," which he retains. His first illustration 
in Pickwick was Dr. Slammer's defiance of Jingle. He 
illustrated most of Dickens's serial stories, issued within the 
familiar green covers. Author and artist suited each other 
exactly. 

In March, 1866, Mr. Dickens was compelled, as it were, 
to publish a detailed account of Mr. Seymour's connection 
with Pickwick. There had been published, an edition of 
"Seymour's Sketches," with a memoir by Mr. Bohn. Mr. 
Seymour's son wrote a long letter to the Atheneeum decla- 
ring that these were not printed from the original plates, 
but were imitations. He adds : 

As regards " Pickwick," it is true that the original plan 
was to give the adventures of a club of cockne}'' sportsmen, 
and the idea and title of the work was my father's, who had 
so far matured his plan as to show it to Mr. McLean, and 
afterwards to Mr. Spoon er, who had some idea of publish- 
ing it, and proposed that Theodore Hook should write the 
letter-press. We have reason to infer, from an entrj'- in the 
artist's book, that the first four plates were etched before he 
showed the work, and that the}^ were afterwards re-etched, 
and modified, in some degree, to suit Mr. Dickens's views — 
which circumstance may account for the style of his letter 
to my father, written just after the first number appeared, 
where he seems to claim a share of merit in originating the 
design : 



no LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

" 15, Furnival's Inn. 
" My dear Sir,—! had intended to write you, to say how 
much gratified I feel by tlie pains you have bestowed on our 
mutual friend, Mr. Pickwick, and how much to the result 
of your labors has surpassed my expectations. I am happy 
to be able to congratulate you, the publishers, and my- 
self on the success of the undertaking, which appears to 
have been most complete, — Dear Sir, \'fery truly yours, 

Charles Dickens." 

Mr. Seymour promised, in a future letter, an account of 
the origin of the " Pickwick Papers." This drew the fol- 
lowing from Mr. Dickens, also published in the Athenaeum. 

Gad's Hill Place, IilarcJi 28, 1866. 

As the author of the '* Pickwick Papers " (and of one or 
two other books), I send you a few facts, and no comments, 
having reference to a letter signed " R. Seymour," which in 
your editorial discretion you published last week. 

Mr. Seymour the artist never originated, suggested, or in 
any way had to do with, save as illustrator of what I devised, 
an incident, a character (except the sporting tastes of Mr. 
"Winkle), a name, a phrase, or a word, to be found in the 
" Pickwick Papers." 

I never saw Mr. Seymour's handwriting, I believe, in 
m}^ life. 

I never even saw Mr. Seymour but once in my life, and 
that was within eight-and-forty hours of his untimely 
death. Two persons, both still living, were present on that 
short occasion. 

Mr. Seymour died when only the first twenty-four printed 
pages of the " Pickwick Papers " were published ; I think 
before the next twenty-four pages were completely written ; 
I am sure before one subsequent line of the book was in- 
vented. 

Here Mr. Dickens quoted, from the Preface to the cheap 
edition of the Pickwick Papers, published in October, 184T, 
that account of the origin of that work, which has already 
been given (pp. 63-64) in the present volume. He con- 
cludes thus ; 

In July, 1849, some incoherent assertions made by the 



HIS ARTISTS. in 

widow of Mr. Seymour, in the course of certain endeavors 
of hers to raise money, induced me to address a letter to 
Mr. Edward Chapman, then the only surviving business part- 
ner in the original firm of Chapman & Hall, w^ho first pub- 
lished the " Pickwick Papers," requesting him to inform me 
in writing whether the foregoing statement was correct. 

lu Mr. Chapman's confirmatory answer, immediately 
written, he reminded me that I had given Mr. Seymour more 
credit than was his due. " As this letter is to be historical," 
he wrote, " I may as well claim what little belongs to me in 
the matter, and that is, the figure of Pickwick. Seymour's 
first sketch," made from the proof of my first chapter, " was 
of a long, thin man. ^llie present immortal one was made 
from my description of a friend of mine at Richmond." 

Charles Dickens. 

There were subsequent letters from Mr. H. G. Bohn and 
Mr. R. Seymour (who is a music master, not an artist), but 
the above closed the question, as far as Mr. Dickens was 
concerned. 

On lookinof throudi the works of Mr. Dickens, I find that 
George Cruikshank illustrated the Sketches by ' Boz;^ Oliver 
Twist; and the Life of Joseph Grimaldi ; that H. K. 
Browne, as ' Phiz' exclusively illustrated the Pickwick Pa- 
pers, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Domhey and Son, 
The History of David Copper field, Bleak House, and Little 
Dorrit ; that Marcus Stone illustrated Great Expectations, 
A Tale of Two Cities, Pictures from Italy, and American 
Notes ; that J. Walker illustrated Hard Times and Reprinted 
Pieces ; that H. K. Browne and George Cattermole were 
the artists of the Old Curiosity Shop, (Daniel Maclise con- 
tributing the sketch of Little Xell and the Sexton,) and 
Barnaby Budge ; and that the Christmas Carol and four 
other stories of that series, were illustrated by John Leech, 
Daniel Maclise, Clarkson Stanfield, and Sir Edwin Land- 
seer. " The M3^stery of Edwin Drood" is illustrated by 
a new artist, Mr. S. L. Fildes, to whom Mr. Dickens was 
attracted by a picture of his in an exhibition. In addition, 
as already stated, Maclise painted the portrait, a line en- 



n2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

graving of which was the frontispiece to Nicholas Nichleby, 
when completed as a volume in 1840. 

This chapter, exclusivelj^ relating to artists, may close 
with an instance of Mr. Dickens's kind consideration for 
one, with whom he was not personall}^ acquainted. In the 
autumn of 1847, a friend of mine, who had spent several 
3^ears in Italy, engaged in the study and practice of his art 
as a painter, showed me several views which he had taken 
of the Yilla, in Genoa, where Dickens had resided in 1844-5, 
and which he has described so brilliantly and effectively in 
his Pictures from Italy. This was a snperb residence — the 
Palazzo Peschiere, within the city, which he has spoken of 
in this glowing language, a picture in words : 

There is not in Italj^ they say (and I believe them), a 
lovelier residence tlian the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of 
the Fish-ponds, whither we removed as soon as our three 
months' tenancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro had ceased and 
determined. 

It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof 
from the town ; surrounded b\' beautiful gardens of its own, 
adorned with statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, ter- 
races, walks of orange trees and lemon trees, groves of roses 
and camelias. All its apartments are beautiful in their pro- 
portions and decorations ; but the great hall, some fifty feet 
in height, with three large windows at the end, overlooking 
the whole town of Genoa, the harbor and the neighboring 
sea, affords one of the most fascinating and delightful pros- 
pects in the world. Any house more cheerful and habitable 
than the great rooms are, within, it would be difficult to 
conceive ; and certainl}^ nothing more delicious than the 
scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be im- 
agined. It is more like an enchanted palace in an Eastern 
story than a grave and sober lodging. 

How 3'ou may wander on, from room to room, and never 
tire of the wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright 
in their fresh coloring as if they had been painted but 3^ester- 
day ; or how one floor, or even the great hall which opens 
on eight other rooms, is a spacious promenade ; or how there 
are corridors and bed-chambers above which we never use 
and rarel}^ visit, and scarcel}^ know the way through; or 



PALACE OF THE FISH-PONDS. 173 

bow there is a view of a perfectly different character on each 
of the four sides of the building; matters little. But that 
prospect from the hall is like a vision to me. I go back to 
it in fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred times 
a day ; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents 
from the garden rising up about me, ina perfect dream of 
happiness. 

There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many 
churches, monasteries and convents, pointing up into the 
sunny sky ; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, 
a solitary convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an 
iron cross at the end, where sometimes, early in the morn- 
ing, I have seen a little group of dark-veiled nuns gliding 
sorrowfull}^ to and fro, and stopping now and then to peep 
down upon the waking world in which they have no part. 
Old Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in good weather, but 
sulkiest when storms are coming on, is here, upon the left. 
The Fort within the walls (tiie good King built it to com- 
mand the town, and beat the houses of the Genoese about 
their ears, in case the}" should be discontented) commands 
that height upon the right. The broad sea lies be3^ond, in 
front there ; and that line of coast, beginning by the light- 
house, and tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy dis- 
tance, is the beautiful coast road that leads to Nice. The 
garden near at hand, among the roofs and houses : all red 
with roses and fresh with little fountains : is the Aqua Sola 
— a public promenade, where the military band plays gaily, 
and the white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese nobility 
ride round, and round, and round, in state-clothes and 
coaches at least, if not in absolute wisdom. Within a 
stone's-throw, as it seems, the audience of the Day- 
Theatre sit ; their faces turned this way. But as the stage 
is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledg^e of the cause, 
to see their faces change so suddenly from earnestness to 
laughter ; and odder still, to hear tho rounds upon rounds 
of applause, rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain 
falls. But, being Sunday night, they act their best and 
most attractive plays. And now, the sun is going down in 
such a magnificent array of red, and green, and golden light, 
as neither pen nor pencil could depict ; and to the ringing 
of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at once, without a twi- 
light. Then, lights begin to sliine in Genoa, and on the 
country road ; and the revolving lantern out at sea there, 

II 



174 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

flashing, for an instant, on this palace front and portico, 
ilhiminates it as if there were a bright moon bnrsting from 
behind a clond ; then, merges it in deep obscurit3^ And 
this, so far as I know, is the only reason why the Genoese 
avoid it after dark, and think it haunted. 

M}^ memory will haunt it, many nights in time to come ; 
but nothing worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will oc- 
casionally sail away, as I did one pleasant Autumn evening, 
into the bright prospect, and snuff the morning air at Mar- 
seilles. 

My friend the artist, whom I beg to introduce as Mr. 
Samuel G. Tovey, had taken a fancy to this Palace of the 
Fish-ponds, immediately after Dickens had left it and before 
the above description had appeared. He had made various 
sketches of it, from different points, and was never tired, 
he or his lively little wife, in praising the beauty of its 
situation, construction, prospects, terraces, garden. On my 
suggestion, he resolved to place his sketches, if possible, 
under the eye of him, who, of all men in England, was best 
qualified to decide upon their fidelit}^ and effect. Accord- 
ingly, I wrote to Mr. Dickens, and subjoin his reply. 

Devonshire Terrace, Tenth December, 1847. 
My Dear Sir: — My engagements are so very numerous 
just now, that I cannot have the pleasure of immediately 
seeing Mr. Tovey's drawings. But I have made a note of 
that gentleman's address, and propose calling at his studio 
one day towards the end of the month. 

Yours Faithfully, 

Charles Dickens. 
R. Shelton Mackenzie, Esquire. 

Faithful to his promise, Mr. Dickens soon visited Mr. 
Tovey's studio, and purchased two of the seven Genoese 
sketches, — merely asking the price, which he remarked was 
very low, giving a check for the amount, on the spot, taking 
the sketches home with him in his brougham, and asking 
Mr. Tovey's opinion as to the sort of frame which he 



RESIDENCE IN ITALY. 1^5 

thoiiglit would be most appropriate for tliem. In a few 
weeks he invited the artist and liis wife to an evening partj^, 
where they had the pleasure of seeing the sketches properly 
mounted and placed, and the further gratification of receiv- 
ing, from the author, a handsomely-bound copy of the 
" Pictures from Italy," with a gratifying complimentary 
presentation address, to the lady, in Dickens's autograi)h. 
There was kindness, as well as courtesy, in these little 
attentions. 



■♦•»©»••♦- 



CHAPTER XIII. 

VISIT TO ITALY AND SWITZERLAND. — EDITORSHIP OF DAILY 
NEWS. — LONDON NEWSPAPERS. — PICTURES FROM ITALY.— 
RETURN TO SWITZERLAND. —DOMBEY AND SON. — LORD JEF- 
FREY ON THE DEATH OF LITTLE PAUL. 

Mr. Dickens went to Italy in 1844, some months after 
the publication of The Christmas Carol, and remained 
abroad for a year, though as I learn from one of Lord 
Jeffre^^'s letters to him, he ran over to London in Novem- 
ber, 1844, doubtless to see The Chimes, his second Christ- 
mas tale, through the press. In the Pictures from Italy, 
published in 1846, is a desultory account of what he saw 
and thought. lie went from Paris to Genoa, where he 
resided for some months, and made the usual tour, greatly 
impressed by Kome, Venice, Naples, and Milan, as well as 
by Vesuvius, — which obligingly happened to be in a state of 
eruption, so that he could not say, with Sir Charles Cold- 
stream, " There's nothing in it," — and affected, almost to awe, 
by those Cities of the Past, Herculaneum and Pompeii. It 
has been too much the habit, following the key-note given 
by a sneering reviewer in The Times, to undervalue Mr. 



176 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Dickens's book on Italy. Like the author of " Eothen," he 
discarded from the book a great mass of information and 
observation communicated by previous writers. Few classi- 
cal allusions are to be found in it, for Mr. Dickens was not 
a classical scholar. But it professed to state what a plain 
Englishman thought of a country very celebrated through 
the ages, which he now first visited. He did not take a poetic 
view of Italy. He could not refrain, nor was that to be 
expected, from looking at the sunny, and even the funn}'-, 
side of things ; but whereas this formed the staple of his 
American Notes, it was episodal and occasional in his 
Pictures from Italy. He scarce!}^ touched upon the histori- 
cal associations of the land — living men and women, with 
actual manners and customs, were more in his way. Nor 
did he often describe scener}^, though his sketch of the 
Palace of the Fish-ponds, which he inhabited in Genoa, has 
the breadth and brightness of Claude Lorraine, with the 
minute detail of David Teniers. As for impressive wri- 
ting, commend me to the short sketch entitled, " An Italian 
Dream." Almost any other man would have served up, for 
the hundredth time, the Rialto and the Campanile, the 
Bridge of Sighs and the Piazzetta, the Ducal Palace and 
the granite columns of St. Theodore and St. Mark, but Mr. 
Dickens spoke of the Ocean- Rome, as if he had merely 
dreamed of it, took us across a shadowy Piazza and into an 
immaterial Cathedral, led up the Giants' Stairs, into the 
piombi, and, far below the sea-level, into the pozzi ; and 
showed, as no guide-book does, the true moral sentiment 
associated in a freeman's mind, with Venice, the still lovely 
and picturesque City of the Sea. 

This book, though completed in 1845, was not published 
then. Its contents had been reserved for a new daily jour- 
nal, which Mr. Dickens projected towards the close of the 
3^ear, in conjunction with Messrs. Bradburj^ & Evans, who 
as proprietors, printers, and publishers of Punch, had al- 
ready built up a large, profitable, and increasing business. 



ESTABLISHES THE DAILY NEWS. lit 

It Avas resolved to establish tlie Daily News, in rivalry with 
The Times, which had gradually secured an influence, circu- 
lation, and profits which then made it " the leading journal 
of Europe." In the contemplated venture, the printers 
were to find the capital in money, and Mr. Dickens the cap- 
ital in brain and prestige. At that time, perhaps there was 
room for a new daily morning paper in London. The Pub- 
lic Ledger, which was the oldest, had declined into a mere 
advertising sheet for city salesmen ; the Morning Chronicle, 
once acknowledged organ of the Whig part}^ had lost that 
position, and "dragged its slow length along;" the 3Iorning 
Post was little more than a fashionable gazette ; the Morning 
Herald was ultra-tory, and badly written ; and the Morning 
AJveHiser was simply the paper of the publicans. The 
Times, which had grown into a gigantic property, by care- 
ful management, by paying liberally for the best talent, and 
by establishing a cordon literaire of highly educated and 
able correspondents in foreign countries, towered far above 
its contemporaries. But it had pla^^ed fast and loose in pol- 
itics, the general impression being that it followed rather 
than led public opinion, — "ran with the hare and held with 
the hound," as the saying is. In November, 1834, on the 
dismissal of the Melbourne Cabinet, by William lY., The 
Times announced the fact, with the significant addition 
" The Queen has done it aU." This was on a Saturda}^ but 
the paper, on Monday, was as Tory, in every respect, as it 
previously had been rampantly Liberal. At the close of 
1845, when Sir Robert Peel was about abolishing the bread- 
tax, he was strongly supported by The Times, but the Lib- 
eral party, who were opposed to imposts upon food and also 
wished to return to office, after five 3^ears banishment from 
the Treasury benches, could not depend on The Times to 
aid them also in that. There was room, then, for the estab- 
lishment of a first-class, liberal, morning paper, in London. 
To show the diflSculty of arriving at facts, I may mention 
the doubt as to the da}^ when the first number of the Daily 



ns LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

News appeared, with Mr. Dickens as conductor. He had 
engaged a large staff of writers, reporters, and correspond- 
ents, at very liberal salaries, — for he always desired that 
newspapermen should be well paid. "Men of the Time" 
declares that the Daily News commenced on January 1st, 
1846; the London Beview states, "on the 21st" of that 
month ; but a personal friend, whom I believe to be more 
accurate, puts the date some weeks later. It was announced 
that Mr. Dickens was " head of the literary department." 
He was decidedly liberal in politics, but by no means a po- 
litical writer. Mr. John Forster, who had made a high reputa- 
tion by his political and literary writings in The Examiner, 
had charge of the political department of the new journal, 
but Mr. Dickens was generally understood to be the editor 
In chief. 

The Daily Neivs was a full sized, well-printed, well-edited 
sheet, — but, in the first number was a misprint which caused 
it to be contemptuously regarded by that large and power- 
ful class in London, called " city men." It was an error in 
the price of stocks, — this, by accidental transposing of the 
numerals, being quoted at 39 instead of 93. The publication 
of Pictures from Italy was begun in the second number, and 
shocked many of its serious readers by stating, in the first 
sentence, that Mr. Dickens had started from Paris " on a fine 
Sunday morning." In a short time he retired, finding it 
weary work, and having a new serial story in his mind, and 
Mr. C. W. Dilke, proprietor of the Athen^um since the 
year 1830, was installed as Manager of the Daily News, and 
without making many changes in the staff, S3'stematized 
the whole concern, greatly reduced expenses, and worked a 
large portion of the morning publication, into an afternoon 
off-shoot called The Express, sold at a lower price than the 
Sun, Globe, and Standard, then the only evening London 
papers. It may be added here, that the Daily News con- 
tinued to be published for many years, if not as a losing, 
scarcely as a paying concern, but, not long ago, became 



ACKNOWLEDGES HIS MISTAKE. HO 

a penny paper, like the Telegraph and Standard, and now 
has a large circulation, great influence, and high character 
for consistent liberality. 

Shortly after Mr. Dickens retired from the Daily News, he 
published the volume of Pictures from Italy. It was sneered 
at, as I have said, by a few sharp critics, but had a warm 
reception from the public, who noticed with satisfaction, a 
promise held out in the prefatory chapter. It was this: 
"I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water, 
and would fain that I have, no where, stirred the water so 
roughly, as to mar the shadows. I could never desire to 
be on better terms with all my friends than now, when dis- 
tant mountains rise, once more, in my path. For I need 
not hesitate to avow, that, bent on correcting a brief mis- 
take I made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations 
between mj^self and m^^ readers, and departing for a moment 
from my old pursuits, I am about to resume them, joyfully, 
in Switzerland ; where, during another year of absence, I 
can at once work out the themes I have now in my mind, 
without interruption ; and while I keep my English audi- 
ence within speaking distance, extend my knowledge of a 
noble country, inexpressibly dear to me." 

The " mistake " he made was in becoming editor of a 
daily paper, and the new work was Dombey and Son, the 
publication of which was in the old monthly serial form, 
with the familiar and accustomed green covers. In the 
Preface, on the completion of the work, he bade farewell to 
its readers, saying: " If any of them have felt a sorrow in 
one of the principal incidents on which this fiction turns, I 
hope it may be a sorrow of that sort which endears the 
sharers in it, one to another. This is not unselfish in me. 
I may claim to have felt it, at least as much as anybody 
else, and I would fain be remembered kindly for my part in 
the experience." This is dated, at London, on the 24th of 
March, 1848. In the People's edition, a little later, he 
says ; 



180 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

I began this book by the lake of Geneva, and went on 
with it for some montlis in France. The association 
between the writing and the place of writing is so curiously 
strong in my mind, that at this day, although I know every 
stair in the little Midshipman's house, and could swear to 
every pew in the church in which Florence was married, or 
to every young gentleman's bedstead in Doctor Blimber's 
establishment, I yet confusedly imagine Captain Cuttle as 
secluding himself from Mrs. Macstinger among the moun- 
tains of Switzerland, Similarly, when I am reminded by 
any chance of what it was that the waves were always 
saying, I wander in my fancy for a whole winter night 
about the streets of Paris — as I really did, with a heavy 
heart, on the night when my little friend and I parted com- 
pany for ever. 

Next to the departure, or rather of the translation of 
Little Nell, nothing touched the public mind, with tender 
sympathy and pathetic sorrow, as the death of Little Paul 
Dorabey. Lord Jeffrey, the most critical of readers, who 
used to apply the scalpel, with terrible effect, even to his 
own performances, thus wrote about this mournful, but not 
unexpected, event : 

Oh, my dear, dear Dickens ! what a No. 5 you have now 
given us ! I have so cried and sobbed over it last night, 
and again this morning ; and felt my heart purified by 
those tears, and blessed and loved you for making me shed 
them ; and I never can bless and lov^e you enough. Since 
that divine Nelly was found dead on her humble couch, 
beneath the snow and the ivy, there has been nothing like 
the actual djdug of that sweet Paul, in the summer sun- 
shine of that lofty room. And the long vista that leads 
us so gently and sadly, and yet so gracefully and win- 
ningly, to that plain consummation ! Every trait so true, 
and so touching — and yet lightened by that fearless inno- 
cence which goes playfully to the brink of the grave, and 
that pure affection which bears the unstained spirit, on its 
soft and lambent flash, at once to its source in eternity. 
In reading of these delightful children, how deeply do we 
feel that " of such is the kingdom of Heaven ;" and how 
ashamed of the contaminations which our manhood has 
received from the contact of the earth, and wonder how 



MR. CAREER. 181 

you should have been admitted into that pure communion, 
and so " presumed, an earthly guest, and drawn Empyreal 
air," though for our benefit and instruction. Well, I did 
not mean to say all this ; but this I must say, and you will 
believe it, that of the many thousand hearts that will melt 
and swell over these pages, there can be few that will feel 
their chain so deeply as mine, and scarcely any so grate- 
fully. But after reaching this climax in the fifth number, 
what are you to do with the fifteen that are to follow ? — 
"The wine of life is drawn, and nothing left but the dull 
dregs for this poor world to brag of." So I shall say, and 
fear for any other adventurer. But I have unbounded 
trust in your resources, though I have a feeling that 3'ou 
will have nothing in the sequel, if indeed in your whole 
life, equal to the pathos and poetry, the truth and the ten- 
derness, of the four last pages of this number, for those, 
at least, who feel and judge like me. I am most anxious 
and impatient, however, to see how you get on, and begin 
alread}'- to conceive how yon may fulfil your formerly in- 
credible prediction, that I should come to take an interest 
in Dombey himself. Now that 3^ou have got his stony 
heart into the terrible crucible of affliction, though I still 
retain my incredulity as to Miss Tox and the Major, I feel 
that I (as well as the}') am but clay in the hands of the 
potter, and may be moulded at your will." 

The general opinion of Dombey and Son, as a whole, was 
very favorable, though it was said that " Good Mrs. Brown " 
and her handsome daughter were too melodramatic — what 
would now be called "too sensational." Carker, too, was 
not liked, nor was it intended that readers would take him 
into their friendship. But the subtle villainy of his char- 
acter was represented with delicate discrimination, nor, in 
any of these works is there any chapter more powerful thiin 
that in which are presented the escape of Carker from Dijon, 
after his signal discomfiture by Edith, with his rapid flight, 
across the Continent, from the avenging Nemesis of a wronged 
and violently angered husband. His death — sudden and 
crashing — is in thorough keeping with his bad deserts. With 
consummate skill, the author, who irritates us, at first, by the 



182 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

thorough, overpowering selfishness of Mr. Dombey, brings 
us into kind relations with him at the close. He comes 
out of suffering, purified and exalted. Mr. Dickens told his 
readers, long after the original publication: "Mr. Doraboy 
undergoes no violent internal change, either in this book or 
in life. A sense of his injustice is within him all along. 
The more he represses it, the more unjust he necessarily is. 
Internal shame and external circumstances may bring the 
contest to the surface in a week, or a day ; but, it has been 
a contest for years, and is only fought out after a long bal- 
ance of victory. Years have elapsed since I dismissed Mr. 
Dombey. I have not been impatient to offer this critical 
remark upon him, and I offer it with some confidence." 

In " Dombey and Son," it was noticed that the author's 
creative power was even more fruitful than ever. Florence 
Dombey is one of his finest impersonations of budding 
Womanhood. Edith is unpleasant, but effective. Mrs. Skew- 
ton seems as if she had been picked up at a watering place, 
hand-carriage, page, and all, and bodily thrown into the 
stor}^ Then the scholastic Blimbers were new in fiction, 
but not in life. Who has not seen a Pipchin ? Then, there 
is John Cheek, who will whistle snatches of merry tunes 
when he ought to look gloomy ; and Miss Tox and Polly 
Toodle are from the life. There is not much in Sol Gills, 
of the Wooden Midshipman, or in Walter Gay, his nephew, 
but Toots and Susan Nipper are in wonderful contrast and 
accord, and he who discovered Captain Edward Cuttle, mari- 
ner, and his friend John Bunsby, master of " The Cautious 
Clara," surely merits all the honors of a literary ovation. 

After the usual rest from labor, Mr. Dickens commenced 
a new story, The Personal History of David Gopperfield. 
He avowed that, of all his works, this was his favorite, and 
it has generally been believed that his own early history 
has been given in its pages. In the Preface, dated October, 
1850, he said ; 

I do not find it easy to get suflflcientl^^ far away from this 



DAVID COPPERFIELD. 183 

Book, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer 
to it with the composure which this formal lieacling would 
seeui to require. My interest in it is so recent and strong ; 
and my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret — 
pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the 
separation from many companions — that I am in danger of 
wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, 
and private emotions. 

Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any 
purpose, I have endeavored to say in it. 

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how 
sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-j^ears' 
imaginative task ; or how an Author feels as if he were dis- 
missing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, 
when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from 
him forever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell ; unless, in- 
deed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment 
still) that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the 
reading, more than I have believed it in the writing. 

It was critically reported of David Gopperfield, that it is 
the most finished and natural of his works ; it is more thcT-n 
good. The boj- hood of the hero ; the scene in church ; the 
death of his mother ; the story of Peggott}^ ; poor little 
Em'ly ; that touching love, so true, so perfect, and so deli- 
cate and pure, which the rough old fisherman has for his 
lost niece, cannot be surpassed. The mellow strength and 
mature vigor of style, the modest ingenuousness of Copper- 
field's relation of his progress to literature, supposed truth- 
fuU}'^ to portray Dickens's own career ; the child-wife, her 
death, and David's final love for Agnes — all rush upon our 
memory, and put forward their claims to be admired. The 
original clxaracters are good, and the family of Micawber 
form a group as original as was ever drawn by Mr. 
Dickens. The dark and w^rd character of Rosa Dartle, 
and the revolting one of Uriah Heap, are the only painful 
ones in the book. But they are full of fine touches of 
nature, which also illumine the dark drawing of the Murd- 
stones. It would be easy to point out impressive scenes in 
this book. The most powerful is the description of the 



184 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

tempest and wreck at Yarmouth — a picture, in words, far 
grander and puretthan any painting by Wiihelm Yandervelde 
or Claude Yernet. 

There is not so much broad fun in this tale as in others 
by the same author, but there is more wit and intense pas- 
sion. The old carrier's words, " Barkis is willing,'' have be- 
come a popular saying, and Micawber's hopeful "waitiug 
for something to turn up " is as well known and as often 
repeated as a proverb. Perhaps, in all the wide range of 
his various compositions, the Micawber group is the best 
sustained — with the exception, perhaps, of the Wellers. 
Even the twins come into play to complete that family 
circle. And, at the close, when we read Micawber's letter 
from Australia, and find him doing well and honored, as 
magistrate, we rejoice that will and circumstance, working 
together, have saved him, a good and honored citizen, from 
what once threatened to be a total wreck. 

Mr. Dickens concluded Copperfield as usual, by hinting 
at another work. " I cannot close this volume," he said, 
" more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful glance 
towards the time when I shall again put forth my two green 
leaves once a month, and with a faithful remembrance of 
the genial sun and showers that have fallen on these leaves 
of David Copperfield, and made me happy." This new 
work was not begun so soon as was expected. Before Cop- 
perfield was finished, Mr. Dickens had established a cheap 
weekly periodical, with the title of Household Worlds, I 
slightly anticipate when I add that in consequence of a 
difference with his printers, Bradbury & Evans, this work 
was brought to a conclusion in 1859, and was sitcceeded by 
All the Year Bound, similar in character, form, and size, 
also conducted by Mr. Dickens ; the working editor, until 
a short time ago, being Mr. William Henry Wills, a brother- 
in-law of Messrs. W. & R. Chambers, the Edinburgh pub- 
lishers, and for some years sub-editor of the Daily News. 
When ill health incapacitated Mr. Wills from further work, 



CHANCERY DELAYS. 185 

some short time ago, he was succeeded by Mr. Charles 
DickeDS, junior, who is now, by his father's will, proprietor 
and editor of All the Year Round. But I am getting far 
ahead of the chronological arrangement of this memoir. 

In September, 1853, was completed the publication of 
Bleak House, which had appeared in monthl}^ parts, like the 
majority of its author's previous works. The avowed object 
was to expose the dilatory practice of the Chancery Courts. 
— In his Preface, Mr. Dickens said : 

A Chancery Judge once had the kindness to inform me, 
as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and 
women not laboring under any suspicions of lunacy, that 
the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much 
popular prejudice (at which point 1 thought the Judge's eye 
had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There 
had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of 
progress, but this was exaggerated, and had been entirely 
owing to the " parsimony of the public ;" which guilty 
public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most 
determined manner on by no means enlarging the number 
of Chancery Judges appointed — I believe by Richard the 
Second, but any other King will do as well. 

In contradiction to the judicial statement, was added this 
firm declaration by the author : 

I mention here that everything set forth in these pages 
concerning the Court of Chancery is substantiall}^ true, and 
within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential 
altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a dis- 
interested person who was professionally acquainted with 
the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end. 
At the present' moment there is a suit before the Court 
which was commenced nearly twenty years ago ; in which 
from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at 
one time; in which costs have been incurred to the amount 
of seventy thousand pounds; which is ^friendly suit; and 
which is (I am assured) no nearer its termination now than 
when it was begun. There is another well known suit in 
Chancery, not 3^et decided, which was commenced before 



1S6 LIFE OF CHAHLES DICKENS. 

the close of the last century, and in which more than double 
the amount of seventj^ thousand pounds has been swallowed 
up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce 
AND Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the 
shame of — a parsimonious public. 

Earnestness was apparent throughout Bleak House. The 
manner of telling the story was oat of the common. A 
young lady, who can scarcely be considered as the hero- 
ine, is sometimes the narrator, — the tale being told, on 
other occasions, in the usual manner. Lady Dedlock is a 
sort of Lady Macbeth of private life, very capable of com- 
mitting the murder, which another woman perpetrated. 
Mademoiselle Hortense, the actual criminal, is drawn with 
a free pencil. Boythorn and Harold Skimpole are effective,, 
chiefly because we know the originals of their characters. 
a/ The Jell^by family, we dare say, abound in most great 
I cities ; the mother having a mission, — to neglect her family 
and provide tracts and spelling books, warming-pans and 
flannels for the dusky natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the 
left bank of the Niger. Mr. Turveydrop, like Micawber, is 
sui geneiHs, and it is thought, the author had not to travel 
far to find him. Poor Joe, the crossing-sweeper, is a sad 
illustration of London civilization ; the Rouncewell family 
are firm and true, each of them, and Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet, 
with their children (Woolwich, Quebec, and Malta,) would 
be the salt of any ordinary novel. Of Mr. Bucket, the 
detective, there is a little too much, but we have yet to find 
the reader, who does not honor, while he pities, that noble, 
broken gentleman. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. 

As for the Smallweed coterie, they are a miserable set, 
and Mr. Dickens made one of his greatest mistakes in 
making their precious relative, Krook, perish by spontane- 
ous combustion. He defended it, of course, as men will 
defend errors of judgment, and his position and precedents 
were strongly assailed by Mr. G. H. Lewes. Even if such 
deaths had occurred, the instances were so few as to bo 



TAVISTOCK HOUSE. 181 

exceptional, and therefore not sufficient to work out the 
plot of a novel of common life. 

In Household Wo7^ds, in 1851-3, appeared"^ Child^s 
History of England,^'' hy Mr. Dickens, which cannot be said 
to have added to his reputation. It was written with great 
familiarity, with the view of bringing it down to the com- 
prehension of 3'outh; — for instance, James the First is men- 
tioned, not with the conventional appellation of " His Ma- 
jesty," but of "His Sow-ship" — which is novel, at least. 

About the time Household Words was established, Mr. 
Dickens quitted Devonshire Terrace, Regent's Park, where 
he had resided for ten years, and entered into occupancy of 
Tavistock House, Tavistock Square. This was a beautiful 
villa, with trees and garden, in the heart of London, a mile 
to the east of Devonshire Terrace, which the late Mr. 
James Perry, proprietor and editor of The Homing Chroni- 
cle, had erected on land especially leased to him, by the 
Duke of Bedford, in acknowledgment of his journalistic 
services to the Whig party, some forty j^ears before. It 
was separated from the street b}^ a handsome iron railing, 
the growth of trees within which effectually shut out the 
curious public gaze. It was a splendid Mansion. In one 
part of it, Frank Stone, the artist, whose son illustrated 
Great Expectations and two other of Dickens's works, had 
his studio, I believe. Mr. Dickens occupied Tavistock 
House from 1850 to the summer of 1857, when he removed 
to Gad's Hill House, near Rochester, Kent, where he died. 



188 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

ORIGINALS OP FICTITIOUS CHARACTERS. — OLD WELLER AND MISS 

HUDDART. MR. TRACY TUPMAN AND THE FAT BOY. — MRS. 

BARDELL. MR. JUSTICE STARELEIGH. — MR. SERGEANT 

BUZFUZ. — DODSON AND FOGG. — MR. PERKER — POLICE MAGIS- 
TRATE FANG. — VINCENT CRUMMLES. — W. T. MONCRIEFF. — 
CHEERYBLE BROTHERS. — DANIEL GRANT'S DINNER-PEGS. — 

MRS. NICKLEBY. — SIR JOHN CHESTER. — ALDERMAN CUTE. 

MR. DOMBEY. — PERCH. — SOL. GILLS. — CAPTAIN CUTTLE 

WILKINS MICAWBER. — ESTHER SUMMERLY. — MR. BOYTHORN 
AND LITTLE NELL. — INSPECTOR BUCKET.— CARLAVERO'S 
ENGLISHMAN. — MR. JULIUS SLTNKTON. 

The characters in Dickens' works are to be counted, not 
in scores, but hundreds. It was once hoped that a day 
would arrive, when Dickens, following the example of Sir 
Walter Scott, would give his multitudinous readers some 
account of the sources whence he derived his incidents and 
drew his leading cliaracters. V/riters of fiction, all the 
world knows, do not invariably invent. Few stories have 
been written without some foundation in fact : few charac- 
ters drawn without some prototype, however dim, in actual 
life. It has long been complained of Bulwer that he 

"Is himself the great sublime he drew" 

in "Pelham," and nearly every novelist has been charged; 
by some person, with having had him in view when writing. 
" They talked of me, I am sure," said Scrub in the plfxy, 
"for they laughed consuraedly." So, once upon a time, 
Sheridan, when visiting at a country house, wrote a sermon 
for a young clergyman, who was also a guest, the subject 
of the discourse being the sin of avarice. The sermon was 



ORIGINAL OF OLD WELLER. 189 

duly preached in the village church, and among the congre- 
gation was a rich man, who was said to have acquired his 
wealth in no very honest manner, and to cling to it with 
remarkable tenacity. He, hearing the " still, small voice " 
within, believed that the divine had wilfully and wantonly 
preached at him, and never again favored him with a word 
or bow. It is much the same way with novel-readers, who 
fancy that they see their own likenesses, in characters 
drawn in ignorance of their A^ery existence. 

Old Weller, in " The Posthumous Papers of The Pick- 
wick Club," reminds one, very mnch, of the admirable 
sketch of the Stage Coachman, with great bulk and curiously- 
mottled face, in Washington Irving's '' Sketch Book." In 
other words, for I am not accusing Boz of committing 
plagiary upon Geoffrey Crayon, both authors drew from the 
same special genus — now extinct. The plethoric stage- 
coachman, who drove four-in-hand, changed horses every 
ten miles, and took a glass of ale at each change, has been 
swept away by Railway ism, just as the Indians have been 
driven farther and farther West by the irresistible progress 
of Civilization, and are now nearly extinct. When I first 
travelled through England, forty years ago, just before Rail- 
wayism was begun, nearly every stage-coach had a Jehu of 
this class. 

I believe that Old Weller was drawn from an original, who 
used to " work " a stage-coach between London and Ports- 
mouth, and had a brother on the same line. They passed 
by each other every day, for many years, without any 
opportunity of exchanging words — a mutual smile and 
knowing elevation of the whip-elbow being their only 
salute. When one of these rotund brothers of the whip 
died, the other took it to heart, and followed him in a 
month. This last was Dickens's man. Perhaps Dickens 
may have travelled with him — / did, before Steam became 
omnipotent. Mrs. Warner, the tragic actress, experienced 
an act of kindness from this coachman, which she related 

12 



100 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

to Dickens soon after it occurred, and it may have influenced 
his coachman in Pickwick. 

Before her marriage, Mrs. Warner, who paid a profes- 
sional visit to the United States in 1S52, was Miss Huddart, 
very much respected, on and off the boards. Her father 
had been an officer in the British army, and she alwaj^s 
travelled under his escort. He was known, along the road, 
as "The Captain," and she was familiarly spoken of as 
" Polly Huddart." Once upon a time, she w^as travelling, 
with her father, to begin a short star-season at Ports- 
mouth or Pljniiouth. Every one on that road knew father 
and daughter and the bulky coachman. When he saw 
their names on his "way-bill," he took care that the favo- 
rite box-seat, portion of his own vehicular throne, should 
be reserved for the lady, who was apt. to get sick when an 
inside passenger, and was accustomed, by special favor, 
to take her seat on the outside, with the coachman. Cour- 
teous and conversational as this lady always was, and ex- 
tremely handsome in these distant da3"s, she had become 
an especial favorite with this particular "whip." 

On the occasion I refer to, when the last stage, say twelve 
miles distant from their place of destination, was reached, 
it was discovered that Captain Huddart had suddenlj- died 
in the coach, his daughter then being on it. Of course, 
this caused considerable social commotion, and the corpse 
was taken into the inn, to await inquiry from a coroner's 
inquest. Poor Miss Huddart was sitting in the great parlor 
of the countr}^ inn, almost paralyzed by the sad and sudden 
shock, when the old coachman came into the room, and, 
seeing her unaware of his presence, said, as softly as his 
cruff voice would allow, " The coachman. Miss." Believino; 
that he had come to her for his fee, and greatly annoyed at 
being so intruded upon at such a time, she took out her 
purse, pushed it over to him, as he stood by the table, and 
said in an angry tone, " Help j'ourself !" This he declined 
doing, but, while he was diving into the deep abysm of his 



MISS HUDDAKT'S COACHMAN. 191 

breeches-pocket, in quest, as it seemed, of a huge pocket- 
book, pletlioric as himself, huskily uttered the words, 
" You mistake me. Miss Huddart. All I came to say was 
that player-people don't always have as much money as they 
need, and that, in this sad fix, it will be very unkind if you 
don't allow me, who have known you so long on the road, 
to let you have whatever you may want. There's a hun- 
dred pound, or so, in this pocket-book, and if more's wanted 
towards burying of the old gentleman, I shall bring it with 
me to-morrow morning, when I come back, this same way." 
Then pushing a bundle of bank-notes into the poor young 
lady's hand, he waddled out of the room as fast as possible. 

Next day and for several succeeding days, he again paid 
half a minute's visit to the afflicted and suddenly orphaned 
daughter, and after the funeral, had great pride in giving her 
as heretofore the box-seat with himself. She had great diffi- 
culty in coaxing him to take back the money he had placed 
at her disposal, but, hearing that she was to have a benefit 
at the theatre, he purchased box-tickets to a large amount; 
which he forced upon the passengers whom he drove, telling 
them the tragic story of the Captain's death, and invariably 
answering, whenever reminded that the person whom he 
wished to purchase a ticket, was going from the place where 
the lady's benefit was to be given, that '' so much the better, 
as there would be the more room for the towns-people ! " 
Miss Huddart was persuaded that Dickens, whom she had 
known from his school-da^^s, and to whom she had particu- 
larly described this benevolent stage coachman, probably 
had some remembrance of him when he drew and devel- 
oped the character of Old Weller. 

Upon another passage of Pickwick it has been remarked 
that the incident it pretends to record must have been in- 
vented for the occasion, and " made out of the whole cloth," 
This passage occurs in the loth chapter, in which is related 
part of what was done, and said, at a contested parliament- 
ary election for the borough of Eatanswill, previous to the 
Eeform Bill for 1832. Mr. Pickwick, who has been admit- 



192 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

ted " behind the scenes," on the famous blue interest, repre- 
sented by the Honorable Samuel Slamkey, becomes ac- 
quainted with some of the ways by which the " free and 
independent electors " of the borough were induced to give 
their votes. Among these were, of course, the throwing 
open all the public houses to the electors and their friends ; 
making electors drunk and locking them up until they were 
wanted to vote ; distributing forty-five green silk parasols 
among voters' wives ; hocusing the brandy-and-water of 
hostile voters, so that they were asleep when they ought to 
have been at the poll, and so on. Sam Weller caps these, 
as usual, with a stor}^ of his own, which has sometimes been 
pronounced "utterly extravagant" and improbable. It nar- 
rates how, at an election time, Old Weller had to bring a 
large number of out-voters from Loudon ; how some of the 
adverse party saw him, complimented him on his driving, 
shoved a twenty-pound note into his hand, with " ' It's a 
werry bad road between this and London,' says the genl'm'n. 
— * Here and there it is a heavy road,' says my father. — 
' 'Specially near the canal, I think,' says the gen'lm'n. — 
' Nasty bit, that 'ere,' says my father. — ' Well, Mr. Weller,' 
says the gen'l'm'n, 'you're a werry good w^hip, and can do 
what you like with your horses, we know. We're all wery 
fond o' you Mr. Weller, so in case 3'ou shmdd have an acci- 
dent w^ien you're a bringing these here woters down, and 
should tip 'em over into the canal without hurtin' of 'em, 
this is for yourself,'" sa3^s he. — Also how "on the wery 
day as he came down with them woters, his coach was up- 
set on that 'ere wery spot, and every man on 'em was 
turned into the canal." Here, as Sam observed, was "the 
hex-traordinary, and wonderful coincidence, that arter what 
tliat gen'l'm'n said, my father's coach should be upset in 
that wery place, and on that -wery day." Now it is a par- 
liamentary fact, proven upon oath before successive "com- 
mittees appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into 
the existence of corrupt practices at elections for Members 



CHARACTEES IN PICKWICK. 103 

of Parliament," that the borough of Great Yarmouth has 
labored from an early period of its electoral history under 
the disadvantage of a bad character. Before the Reform 
Bill, the right of election lay in " the burgesses at large " to 
the number of eight hundred. Curious stories are extant of 
the way in which Yarmouth elections were managed in those 
days. A considerable number of the " burgesses at large " 
were non-residents, and had to be brought to Great Yar- 
mouth at election times at the charge of the candidate, and 
at ver}' heavy cost. On one occasion, it is related that a 
ship, chartered to convey out-burgesses from London, was 
detained off Yarmouth until the poll had closed, the captain 
having been paid b}^ the other party to find the wind ad- 
verse. The incident of the upset of a stage-coach convej^ng 
voters which gave them a gratuitous cold bath, has been more 
than a tradition in Great Yarmouth for the last forty or fifty 
j^ears, and is related, with variations, as a clever manoeuvre, 
at every election held in that not immaculate borough. 

A certain Mr. Winters, a middle aged young man, who 
used to be seen, on fine afternoons, ogling the belles, in the 
Ladies' Mile in Hyde Park, or at the fashionable watering 
places in the early autumn, had acquaintances, who insisted 
that he was a fac simile of stout and too susceptible 
Mr. Tracy Tupman. 

The Fat Boy has been vaguely credited to the j^outhful 
and plump servant of a gate-keeper, ("he kept a pike !") in 
Essex, between London and Chelmsford. I have seen at 
least a score of his family, with and w^ithout buttons, in my 
time. In fact, in aristocratic houses, the Page, having next 
to nothing to do, generall}^ runs into flesh, from feeding and 
idleness, even as ladies' lap-dogs do. 

It has been asserted that Mrs. Bardell, with whom no 
woman, spinster, wife, or widow, has ever sympathized, she 
was so terribly absurd, in her designs upon Mr. Pickwick — 
was drawn, with a free but faithful touch, from a Mrs. Ann 
Ellis, who kept an eating-house near Doctors' Commons, (in 



194 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Knight-rider street, between St. Paul's church-yard and Up- 
per Thames street,) and was comely, plump, and agreeable. 

In the memorable trial, Bardell v. Pickwick, the presiding 
functionary, Mr. Justice Stareleigh, was a caricature, by no 
means extravagant, of Sir Stephen Gaselee, who had been 
a junior Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, at the time 
when Lord Wynford (W. D. Best) was Chief Justice of 
that court. He is thus described by Mr. Dickens : " Mr. 
Justice Stareleigh (who sat in the absence of the Chief Jus- 
tice, occasioned by indisposition) was a most particularl}'- 
short man, and so fat, that he seemed all face and waistcoat. 
He rolled in, upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed 
gravel}^ to the bar, who bobbed gravel}^ to him, put his little 
legs underneath his table, and his little three cornered hat 
upon it; and when Mr. Justice Stareleigh had done this, all 
3^ou could see of him was two queer little e^-es, one broad 
pink face, and somewhere about half of a big and very com- 
ical-looking wig." Falling asleep occasionally during the 
trial, confounding persons and things, and generally ex- 
hibiting a considerable amount of mental imbecility, were 
as characteristic of the actual Gaselee as of the imaginary 
Stareleigh. Mr. Dickens's own personal representation, in 
his Readings of the latter, is not to be forgotten by any 
one who witnessed it. Mr. Serjeant Buzfnz is supposed to 
•represent Mr. Serjeant Bumpus, a blustering lawyer, who 
was dreaded, in those days, for the loud and insolent man- 
ner in which he bullied witnesses. 

As for Messrs. Dodson & Fogg, who represent the Black 
Sheep of the law, no doubt it was not difficult to find their 
prototypes among the legal battalions of such a vast cit}^ as 
London, but my knowledge of their profession, in the new 
as well as the old world, warrants my asserting that for 
every one of their grade there are hundreds resembling 
little Mr. Perker, who was Mr. Pickwick's attorney, — of 
the class of educated gentlemen, intelligent, humane, 
thoughtful, and considerate, who conceive it their first duty 
to prevent the expense and suspense of litigation. 



MR. FANG, THE MAGISTRATE. ]95 

"While Oliver Tiuist was in course of puhlication, the senior 
magistrate of Hatton Garden Police Office, was a certain 
A. S. Laiug, Esq., barrister-at-law, notorious, at the time, 
for his cliscourtesj^ and coarseness to all persons, prisoners, 
policemen, witnesses, complainants, law^'ers, and reporters, 
who came before him. At that time. Lord John Russell 
was Home Secretary, with direct official supervision of all 
the London police officers. Kot only the short-comings, 
but the overdoings and the unwise saj'ings of Justice 
Laing, had repeatedly been severely criticised in the news- 
papers, but wholly without effect, for Laing held his place, 
and boasted that he would continue to hold it, whatever 
might be said or done about him. Whereupon, Charles 
Dickens came to the rescue. The eleventh chapter of 
Oliver Twiat treats of Mr. Fang, the police magistrate, and 
furnished a slight specimen of his mode of administering 
justice. Oliver, charged with picking a handkerchief in the 
street, from a Mr. Brownlow's pocket, is brought before this 
worth}^, and thus described : 

Mr. Fang was a middle-sized man, with no great quantity 
of hair ; and what he had, growing on the back and sides of 
his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were 
reall}^ not in the habit of drinking rather more than was ex- 
actly good for him, he might have brought an action against 
his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages. 

The old gentleman bowed respectfully, and, advancing to 
the magistrate's desk, said, suiting the action to the word, 
" That is my name and address, sir." He then withdrew a 
pace or two ; and, with another polite and gentlemanly in- 
clination of the head, waited to be questioned. 

Now, it so happened, that Mr. Fang was at that moment 
perusing a leading article in a nevv'spaper of the morning, ad- 
verting to some recent decision of his and commending him, 
'for the three hundred and fiftieth time, to the special and 
particular notice of the Secretary of State for the Home 
Department. He was out of temper, and he looked up with 
an angry scrowl. 

" AVho are you ?" said Mr. Fang. 

The old gentleman pointed with some surprise to his card. 



/ 

196 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

" Officer !" said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptu- 
ously awa}'- with the newspaper, " who is this fellow ?" 

" My name, sir," said the old gentleman, speaking like a 
gentleman, and consequently in strong contrast to Mr. Fang, 
— "my name, sir, is Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the 
name of the magistrate who offers a gratuitous and unpro- 
voked insult to a respectable man, under the protection of 
the bench." Saying this, Mr. Brownlow looked round the 
office as if in search of some person who could afford him 
the required information. 

" Oflicer !" said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, 
"what's this fellow charged with?" 

" He's not charged at all, 3^our worship," replied the officer. 
"He appears against the boy, your worship." 

His worship knew this perfectly well ; but it was a good 
annoyance, and a safe one. 

Before taking the oath, Mr. Brownlow was again insulted, 
and asked what he meant hy trj-ing to bully a magistrate? 
There is no evidence against Oliver, who faints, and there- 
upon is committed for three months' imprisonment with 
hard labor. But as witness appears a determined uian, 
who proves the innocence of the accused, and compels Mr. 
Fang to discharge the boy, which he does reluctantly, at the 
same time suggesting that the old gentleman was himself a 
thief. — This appeared in Bentley^s Miscellany, in 1837, and 
every one recognized the identity of Fang and Laing. The 
result was, that even the Home Secretary was compelled to do 
the same, and, as a matter of course, to remove Mr. Laing 
from all further official cares, duties, and emoluments. 
Dickens could say, in the words of Coriolanus, " Alone I did 
it," and he obtained no small degree of popularit}^ by the 
directness and successful result of his sketch. From that 
day, London police magistrates have generally been im- 
pressed with the conviction that civilitj'' was what the}'' were 
bound to dispense to, as well as receive from, such of the 
public as appeared before them. 

It is obvious that, in "Nicholas Nickleby," the theatrical 
experience of the author, when a youth, was largely drawn 



W. T. MONCRIEFF. 197 

upoL. Had Dickens been an actor, be must bave acbieved 
fame said fortune. His Captain Bobadil was a personation 
wbicb *.t was a deligbt to witness, a pleasure to recollect. 
Mr. Yin^ent Crummies is said to bave been an English 
country manager, wbo emigrated to tbis country many 
years ago. Tbe "literary gentleman present (at the 
C rummies 's farewell supper) who had dramatized in his time 
two hundred and fort3^-seven novels as fast as they had 
come out— some of them faster than they had come out — 
and luas a literary gentleman in consequence," was the late 
W. T. Moncrieff, who bad dramatized " Tom and Jerr}^" and 
a great many other works. He was stricken with blindness 
long before his death, in 185T, which took place in the 
Charter House, in which he had been finally provided for by 
being appointed a Poor Brother of that charitable institu- 
tion, like Colonel Newcome. 

The Cheeryble Brothers, who figure so advantageously in 
"Nicholas Nickleby," are not mere inventions. In his pre- 
face to that work, Mr. Dickens sa3'S : " It may be right to 
say, that there are two characters in this book which are 
drawn from life. It is remarkable that what we call the 
world, which is so very credulous in what professes to be 
true, is most incredulous in what professes to be imagi- 
nary ; and that while every day in real life it will allow in 
one man no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will 
seldom admit a ver}^ strongly-marked character, either good 
or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the limits of 
probability. For tbis reason they bave been very slightly 
and imperfectly sketched. Those wdio take an interest in 
this tale will be glad to learn that the Brothers Cheeryble 
live ; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, 
their noble nature, and their nnbounded benevolence, are 
no creation of the author's brain ; but are prompting every 
day (and oftenest by stealth) some munificent and generous 
deed in that town of which they are the pride and honor." 

In a subsequent preface, Mr. Dickens appends the follow- 



198 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKEKS. 

ing paragraph to the above : " If I were to attempt to sum 
up the hundreds upon hundreds of letters from all sorts of 
people, in all sorts of latitudes and climates, to which this 
unlucky paragraph has since given rise, I should get into 
an arithmetical difficulty from which I could not easil}^ ex- 
tricate myself. SufiQce it to say, that I believe the applica- 
tions for loans, gifts, and offices of profit which I have been 
requested to forward to tbe originals of the Brothers 
Cbeeryble, (with whom I never interchanged any commu- 
nication in my life,) would have exhausted the combined 
patronage of all the lord chancellors since the accession of 
the House of Brunswick, and would have broken the Rest 
of the Bank of England." 

The Cheerybles, in the tale, were William Grant & 
Brothers, cotton spinners and calico printers, near Man- 
chester, and Dickens did not exaggerate the excellence of 
their kind disposition nor the wide range of their practical 
and unobtrusive benevolence. There were four brothers — 
William, Daniel, John and Charles — and the characteristics 
of the family were the strength of their fraternal affection, 
their benevolence and generosit}^, and their success in busi- 
ness, which furnished them with the m.eans of exercising a 
seemingly unbounded hospitality and munificence. Their 
father was a small farmer in Moraj^shire, Scotland. A 
great flood carried awa}^ not onl}^ his cattle and his corn, 
but the very soil of his farm, leaving stones and gravel in 
its stead. The Highland spirit of Grant would not stoop 
to ask assistance from the wealthier members of his clan, 
and he engaged himself to conduct a drove of cattle to the 
south. Unsuspecting, as he was honest, he lent some of his 
money to men who cheated him out of it, and not having tbe 
means of conve3nng himself back to the Highlands, he ac- 
cepted some humble employment at Bur}^ At that time the 
success of the Peels and Arkwrights had induced many rich 
men to give high premiums to printers and dyers to take 
their sons as apprentices, and that class of learners were 
found to be of little or no use to their eniployers. 



CIIEERYBLE BROTHERS. 199 

"William Grant, then about fourteen years of age, Tvho 
had accompanied his father, had attracted the notice of a 
printer at Bury, who took him as an apprentice, and his 
conduct confirmed the good impression which his master 
had formed of him, and other calico printers had their eyes 
upon him as one that would make his way. When his 
apprenticeship was out, the Peels wished to concentrate 
their works, and offered him. the j^rint works at Rams- 
bottom. " I have no money ^to buy works with," said the 
young man. "We will trust you, and you will pay us by 
instalments," said they. The bargain was made, and in a 
few 3'ears William was in possession of the title deeds of his 
purchase. Previously the father and his thriving son had 
sent for old Mrs. Grant, her daughter, and the three other 
sons (Daniel, John, and Charles,) whom he took into part- 
nership with him, and their course was one of uninterrupted 
prosperity. William accounted for this in these words, 
" Wh}^, sir, you see that we were four brothers who never 
had a word of disagreement with each other, and we all 
worked heartily together for the common good. Then, sir, 
we took care never to haje a bad stock, for whenever any- 
thing hung in the market we pushed it off, and tried to pro- 
duce something better ; and then, sir, money made money. 
When we had enough risks at sea to make a fair average 
risk, we gave over marine insurance, and saved 80,000Z. in 
that way, for we had scarcely any losses. And then, sir, 
Providence blessed us ; and the more we gave away, sir, 
the more God sent us." He might have inckided in the 
cause of their success, their strict integrity, which gave all 
who bought from them the firm assurance that they would 
be honorably dealt with. It was well said of them, that 
they had attained the rank of merchant princes without 
having incurred the charge of a single shabby transaction. 

Charles was the first to die. Then followed the death of 
William, which was understood to have been very strongly 
felt by Daniel, who was very little younger, and with the 



200 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKEKS. 

infirmities of age growing upon him. After that time his 
appearance in public became less and less frequent ; but 
there is no doubt that he continued to exercise the benevo- 
lence which was the characteristic of the family. He 
was likewise known as a patron of the fine arts ; his collec- 
tion of paintings at his houses in Manchester and at 
Springside were extensive, forming a gallery of art of no 
trifling value. He died, in March, 1855, and Mr. John 
Grant, of Nuttall Hall, Lancashire, then was the sole sur- 
vivor of William Grant & Brothers, spinners and calico- 
printers. He too has passed away. The vast property of 
the brothers was inherited b}^ their sons and nephews. A 
monument, erected on Pendle Hill, between Ramsbottom 
and Bury, marks the spot where the brothers, then starting 
in life, took a survey of a district, a great portion of which 
was subsequently their own by purchase. Mr. Daniel 
Grant chiefly lived, in his latter years, in his house, Mosle}^- 
street, Manchester. His friends, it was said, had a general 
invitation to take the usual one o'clock dinner with him 
whenever they pleased. But he never entertained more 
than nine friends. There were ten pegs in his hall, one of 
which was always occupied by his own broad-brim. As his 
friends came in, each appropriated one of the pegs. When 
the whole ten were thus covered, the next comer, seeing 
that the party was complete, left his card and compliments 
with the portly butler, — and went elsewhere to dine — ■ 
determining, no doubt, that he would endeavor to arrive 
earlier, next time. All that I have heard, in their own 
neighborhood, about the generosity and kind feelings of 
William Grant and his brothers, strongly warrants me in 
stating that Dickens's account of their goodness and 
primitive oddity of manner, softened by geniality and benev- 
olence, was scarcely too highly'' colored. 

Some people, who remember what may be called the 
inconsequence of Mrs. John Dickens's conversation, fancy 
that they caught a glimpse of her in — Mrs, Nickleby I 



MR. DOMBEY. 201 

In "Barnaby Kudge," we meet Sir John Chester, said to 
have been meant for the late Sir William Henry Maule, one 
of the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas. There are 
a few points of resemblance, but the sketch is not good. 
Maule was neither a selfish nor a heartless man. A recent 
editor of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son suggests that 
Sir John Chester was a pseudonyme of the gallant Earl, 
who died as far back as IttS — seven years before the Gor- 
don Riots took place. 

Sir Peter Laurie, a Border Scot, who had built up a great 
business in London, as a saddler, and for many years had 
been a principal contractor for the East Indian army, was 
the original of Alderman Cute, in The Chimes. He had 
served as SheriflT of London and Middlesex, in 1823-4, on 
which occasion he was Knighted ; was chosen Alderman in 
1826 ; and was Lord Mayor of London in 1832-3. He was 
very hard, or rather harsh, with the poor, and had aroused 
Dickens's indignation by saying, one 'day, when he was 
acting magistrate at Guildhall police office, and a wretched 
woman of the town was before him, charged with attempting 
to drown herself, that he "would soon put down suicide." 
He carried out his intention, by committing for imprison- 
ment and hard labor in "Bridewell," of which hospital he 
was President, all persons placed before him, charged with 
such attempt. 

In '' Dombey & Son,^^ several characters are said to have 
been drawn from life. Mr. Dombey is supposed to repre- 
sent Mr. Thomas Chapman, shipowner, whose offices were 
opposite the Wooden Midshipman. I had the honor of 
meeting Mr. Chapman, at dinner, (at Lough's, the sculptor,) 
and the rigidity of his manner was only equalled by that of 
his form ; he sat or stood, as the case might be, bolt upright, 
as if he knew not how to bend — as stiff, in fact, as if he had 
swallowed the drawing-room poker in his youth, and had 
never digested it. As if to make Mr. Chapman undoubtedly 
identical with Dombey, we have, as messenger of the com- 



202 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKERS. 

mercial house of " Dorabey & Son," one Perch, actually 
taken from a funny little old chap named Stephen Hale, 
who was part clerk, part mes^nger, in Mr. Chapman's 
office. Old Sol Gills was intended for a little fellow named 
2>^orie, who kept a very small shop, in Leadenhall street, 
exactly opposite the office of John Chapman & Co., in 
which " the stock in trade comprised chronometers, barom- 
eters, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quad- 
rants, and specimens of every kind of instruments used in 
the working of a ship's course, or the keeping of a ship's 
reckoning, or the prosecuting of a ship's discoveries." la 
front of this small shop stands a figure, carved in wood, 
and curiously painted, of a miniature midshipman, with a 
huge quadrant in his hand, as if about taking an observa- 
tion. What is more, the little shop and the Wooden Mid- 
shipman may be seen, by the curious, adorning Leadenhall 
street to this very day. I speak of the Wooden Midship- 
man, as I saw him, in 1852. He may have been swept away 
by what is called "improvement." Captain Cuttle was one 
David Mainland, master of a merchantman, who was intro- 
duced to Dickens on the day when, with Thomas Chapman, 
Daniel Maclise, John Leech, Thomas Powell, and Samuel 
Ptogers, he went to see Crosby Hall, Bishopgate street, the 
restoration of vv^hich had then (1842) been completed with 
great taste and skill. This is all that remains of the dwell- 
ing of Richard III., repeatedly mentioned by Shakespeare. 
The bay-window, or oriel, is the chef cZ' oeuvre of the 
domestic architecture of Old London, and the stone carving 
is as sharp as when first cut, four centuries ago. The 
party, m}'' exact informant tells me, proceeded from Crosby 
Hall to the adjacent London Tavern, also in Bishopgate 
street, where, at the proper charge of Mr. Thomas Chap- 
man, Bathe & Breach supplied a lunch. Of the six who 
constituted that social party, only one survives. On that 
day, however, Dickens "booked" Captain Cuttle, though 
he did not appear in Dombey S Son until five years later. 



HAROLD SKIMPOLE. 203 

In David Copperfield, the striking character of Wilkins 
Micawber, who was always waiting "for something to turn 
np," w^as believed, by many who thought themselves com- 
petent to decide, to have been the author's attempt to 
represent his own father ! It was said that the elder Dickens 
knew and did not wholly disapprove of the sketch. It will 
be remembered by the readers of " David Copperfield," that 
though Mr. Micawber is represented as careless in money- 
matters, apt to get into debt, and addicted to get out of it 
by means of bills and notes-of-hand, he never says or does 
anything at variance with morality and probity. He is 
eternally waiting "for something to turn up," and shifting, 
as best he can, in the meantime. But he is never mean, 
false, nor dishonest, and it is his keen sense of the right that 
eventually places him in triumphant antagonism with that 
precious limb of the law — a disgrace to an honorable profes- 
sion — Mr. Uriah Heep. 

In David Copper^ field, Mr. Traddles, the hero's j^outhful 
friend, who finally is spoken of as the next Judge, is sup- 
posed to have been intended for the late Sir T. N. Tal- 
fourd, the author's oldest and truest friend. The sketch is 
scarcely complimentary. 

In Bleak House at least three characters are said to have 
been drawn from real life. These are Esther S^mmerson, 
Boythorn, and Harold Skimpole. Place aux dames ! There- 
fore, we begin by stating the belief, among parties who 
ought to have known, that Esther S^mmerson, who tells so ^ 
much of the story of Bleak House, is believed to bear a 
great resemblance to Miss Sophia Iselin, author of a volume 
of poems published in 184t. Her sister, a protegee of Charles 
Lamb, was married to Edward Moxon, the publisher, who, 
benefited largely by Samuel Roger's testamentar}^ provision. 
Sophia Iselin has no cause to complain of her full length 
in Bleak House. 

As for Harold Skimpole, it was admitted by Dickens that 
Leigh Hunt was irrepressibly in his mind when developing 



204 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

this selfish and unscrupulous sentimentalist, though he en- 
deavored to make the sketch not like the original. Careless 
as to money — apparently ignorant of its value — Leigh Hunt 
may have been, but Harold Skimpole, in Bleak House, is 
drawn with a pen dipped in aqua fortis. In December, 
1859, Mr. Dickens published a disavowal of having drawn 
Harold Skimpole, in Bleak House, from his friend Leigh 
Hunt. The statement first " came from America," and there- 
fore Mr. Dickens "let the thing go by." He alluded to it 
in 1859, because the report had been received in England, 
since Leigh Hunt's death. Mr. Dickens must have had un- 
usual ignorance of literary table-talk in England if he did 
not know, even while Bleak House was in serial publication, 
that literary people who knew Hunt and read Dickens, 
instantly recognized the former as the veritable Harold 
Skimpole. The identification of living Hunt with fictitious 
Skimpole did not originate in America, where it was but the 
echo of the English belief. The question is, was Leigh 
Hunt in Dickens's mind when he sketched and filled up the 
character of Harold Skimpole ? His words, in All the Year 
Round, are as follows : 

The fact is this : Exactly those graces and charms of man- 
ner which are remembered in the words we have quoted, 
were remembered by the author of the work of fiction in ques- 
tion, when he drew the character in question. Above all 
other things, that " sort of gay and ostentatious wilfulness " 
in the humoring of a subject, which had many a time de- 
lighted him, and impressed him as being unspeakably whim- 
sical and attractive, v/as the airy quality he wanted for the 
man he invented. Partly for this reason, and partly (he has 
since often grieved to think) for the pleasure it afforded him 
to find that delightful manner reproducing itself under his 
hand, he yielded to the temptation of too often making the 
character speak like his old friend. He no more thought, 
God forgive him ! that the admired original would ever be 
charged with the imaginary vices of the fictitious creature, 
than he has himself ever thought of charging the blood of 
Desdemona and Othello on the innocent Academy model 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 205 

•^'ho sat for lago's leg in the picture. Even as to the mere 
occasional manner, he meant to be so cautious and conscien- 
tious, that he privately referred the proof sheets of the first 
number of that book to two intimate literary friends of 
Leigh Hunt (both still living), and altered the whole of that 
'part of the text on their discovering too strong a resemblance 
to his "way.^^ 

Mr. Dickens admitted that Hunt ivas in his mind when he 
drew the character of Skimpole. Nay, more, Dickens ad- 
mited that " he yielded to the temptation of too often ma- 
king the character speak like his old friend ;" and fancying 
that he had photographed the character too exactly, sub- 
mitted what he had written to two literary friends of Hunt's, 
and altered that part of the text on their discovering that 
the fictitious was too recognizable for the real character. 
Enough was left, however, as the public discovered at once, 
to show that Skimpole was Hunt. Charles Dickens, instead 
of a denial that Harold Skimpole was Leigh Hunt, published 
an admission of the fact. 

It is stated in John Forster's Biography of Walter Savage 
Landor, that the Boythorn of Bleak House was drawn from 
Landor, as Dickens knew him, in 1839, — the very year in 
which Landor wrote to Forster, saying, " Tell him (Dickens) 
that he has drawn from me more tears and more smiles 
than are remaining to me for all the rest of the w^orld, real 
or ideal." A letter from Mr. Dickens, on first meeting 
Mr. Landor, says, " There was a sterling quality in his 
laugh, and in the roundness and fulness with which he 
uttered every word he spoke, and in the ver}^ fury of his 
superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank cannons and 
hurt nothing." He also describes him as grand in repose, 
" such a true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously 
polite, his face lighted up by a smile of as much sweetness 
and tenderness, and it seemed as plain that he had nothing 
to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was, incapable 
of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those 
blank great guns because he carried no small arms what- 

13 



208 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

ever ; that really I could not help looking at him with equal 
pleasure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed, 
or was led into some great volley of superlatives, or threw 
up his head like a blood-hound, and gave out that tre- 
mendous Ha! ha! ha!" The Landor of actual and the 
Boythorn of fictitious life are certainly one and undivided. 
If possible, the living Landor was more unnaturally original 
than his counterfeit presentment in the tale ! 

Mr. John Forster mentioning a visit which Dickens and 
himself paid to Walter Savage Landor, to keep the birth- 
day of the latter, says " I think it was at the first celebration 
of the kind, in the first of his Bath Lodgings, 35th street, 
James's Square, that the fancy which took the form of Little 
Nell in the Curiosity Shop first dawned on the genius of 
its creator. No character in prose fiction was a greater 
favorite with Landor, He thought that, upon her, Juliet 
might for a moment have turned her eyes from Romeo, and 
that Desdemona might have taken her hair-breadth escapes 
to heart, so interesting and pathetic did she seem to him ; 
and when, some years later, the circumstance I have re- 
called was named to him, he broke into one of those whim- 
sical bursts of comical extravagance out of which arose the 
fancy of Boythorn, With tremendous emphasis he confirmed 
the fact, and added that he had never in his life regretted 
any thing so much as his having failed to carry out an in- 
tention he had formed respecting it ; for he meant to have 
purchased that house, 35 St. James's Square, and then and 
there have burned it to the ground, to the end that no meaner 
association should ever desecrate the birth-place of Nell. 
Then he would pause a little, become conscious of our sense 
of his absurdity, and break into a thundering peal of 
laughter." 

Some friends of Mr. John Dickens thought they recog- 
nized certain of his characteristics, as regarded Deportment, 
in the sketch of that eminent professor, Mr. Turveydrop. 
Mr. Bucket, the detective, also a character in Bleak House, 
was most probably Inspector Field, with whom Mr. Dickens 



CARLAVERO'S ENGLISHMAN. 207 

was very well acquamted, for bis original. It will be remem- 
bered that Mr. Dickens published several papers in which 
his wanderings under the protective escort of Mr. Field 
were pretty fully described. 

There is a character in Dickens's works which is not 
fictitious, but cannot be passed over. Many have read the 
sketch, entitled " The Italian Prisoner," in The Uncom- 
mercial Traveller, in which a certain Giovanni Carlavero, 
anxious to express his gratitude to "a certain generous and 
gentle English nobleman," who saved his life when he was 
a gallej^-slave, for politics only, and rescued him from the 
hopeless horrors of an Italian dungeon, sends him, per 
Charles Dickens, a gigantic demijohn of wine, the very first 
of his little vinej-ard. With great difficulty this stupendous 
Bottle, holding some half dozen gallons, was taken to Eng- 
land, through Italy, France, and Germany, and was mere 
vinegar when it reached its address. ''And the Englishman 
told me," the Sketch says, ''with much emotion in his face 
and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to 
him so sweet and sound." The person who received Car- 
lavero's grateful offering was Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart, 
brother of the first Marquis of Bute. He was in the House 
of Commons for many years, and was the invariable advo- 
cate of liberal measures. He particularly devoted himself 
to the interests of the exiled Poles, who had founded an 
asylum in England. He died in November, 1854, aged 
forty-six. Dickens says : " He is dead in these days when 
I relate the story, and exiles have lost their best British 
friend." 

In the story, entitled " Hunted Down,"* published in the 

* "Hunted Down" was written specially for the "New York 
Ledger," by Mr. Dickens, for which Mr. Robert Bonner, the 
pubUsher of it, paid him one thousand pounds. It is included in 
no editions of the works of Charles Dickens, either in Europe or 
America, except those published by T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 
Philadelphia. 



208 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

New York Ledger, in 1859, by Mr. Robert Bonner, it is 
evident that, as also in Bulwer's " Lucretia, or the Children 
of Night," the hero was taken, scarcely idealized, from 
Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, Charles Lamb's favorite 
" Janus Weathercock," of the Loyidon Magazine. This 
villain actually poisoned several persons, on whose lives 
heavy insurances had been effected, and succeeded in obtain- 
ing the money, in some instances. Tried and convicted of 
forgery, he was sent to one of the British penal colonies for 
life, and, after several years, died in that deserved captivity. 
Mr. Dickens, in one of his latest papers in All the Year 
Bound, gave a detailed account of this wretch. In Hunted 
Down, his shadow is called Mr. Julius Sliukton, of the 
Middle Temple. 

Dr. Charles Rogers, writing from Lewisham, a Kentish 
suburb of London, to the Daily News, gives an account of 
the origin of the name Master Humphrej^'s Clock, which 
has an air of probability. He saj^s : — "In 1864, in the 
course of a tour, I arrived at the town of Barnard Castle, 
in the county of Durham, late on a winter evening, and put 
up at the principal hotel, a large old-fashioned structure, 
fronting the principal street. At breakfast the following 
morning I chanced to notice on the opposite side of the 
street a large clock-face, with the name Humphrey surround- 
ing it, most conspicuously exhibited in front of a watch and 
clock-maker's shop. ' How odd,' I exclaimed to a gentle- 
man seated beside me, ' here is Master Humphrey's clock !' 
'Of course,' said the gentleman, 'and don't you know that 
Dickens resided here for some weeks when he was collecting 
materials for his Nicholas Nicklebj^, and that he chose his 
title for his next work by observing that big clock-face from 
tills window ?' After breakfast, I stepped across to the 
watchmaker, and asked him whether I had been correctly 
informed respecting Mr. Dickens and the clock. The 
worthy horologist entered into particulars. * My clock,' 
said he, ' suggested to Mr. Dickens the title of his book of 



MR. HUMPHREY, HIS CLOCK. 209 

that name, I have a letter from him statinof this, and a 
copy of the work, inscribed with his own hand. For some 
years we corresponded. I got acquainted with him just by 
his coming across from the hotel, as you have done this 
morning, and asking me to inform him about the state of 
the neighboring boarding-schools. Mr. Humphrey then 
entered into many particulars respecting the condition of 
these schools. Incidentall}^ he said, he had directed Mr. 
Dickens and his friend " Phiz" to the school which the two 
travellers afterward rendered infamous by their pen and pen- 
cil ; but it was, he said, by no means the woi'st of those in- 
stitutions. The schoolmaster had been very successful in 
obtaining pupils, and had become very tyrannical, and even 
insolent, to strangers. He received Mr. Dickens and his 
companion with extreme hauteur, and did not so much as 
withdraw his eyes from the operation of pen-making during 
their interview. But '* Phiz" sketched him on his nail and 
reproduced him so exactly, that soon after the appearance 
of the novel the school fell off, and was ultimately deserted. 
Since that period the " Do-the-Boys" description of school 
had altogether ceased in the district. Mr. Dickens has 
mentioned that he took a journey to Yorkshire, in 1838, be- 
fore he began to compose Nicholas Nicklehy, and a letter in 
my possession, which I shall print, states that, in January 
in that year, he was in Darlington, which is within a dozen 
miles of the fine old market-town of Barnard's Castle. 



I 

210 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER XY. 

LETTER-WRITING. — EPISTOLATORY MENDICANTS. — A NOTE FROM 

YORKSHIRE. — MR. EWART A SLOW BINDER. — MASTER 

HUMPHREY'S "WORKS." — TALFOURD'S POST-PRANDIAL 
READING. — LETTERS TO TALFOURD, FRANK STONE, AND 

MACKENZIE. — MAMMOTH JOURNALS. — THE MOON HOAX 

LORD NUGENT. 

Nobody who had once noticed could readily forget the 
peculiar handwriting of " Boz." I have known it for over 
thirty years, and have never seen any variation in it. It was 
very legible ; it was a flowing hand, each line being written, 
almost, by one continuous action of hand and pen ; it was 
unlike any other writing that you ever saw. The signature, 
too, was wholly out of the common, with that prolonged 
flourish under the name, finally tapering to a point, far 
below by what musicians would call a dimuendo movement. 
The first letter of the Christian name was written upon no 
apparent system, but had rarely varied ; you were often 
puzzled to know whether it was a C or a G, and accepted it 
as the former, simply because it was impossible that it could 
have been the latter. This signature, with the flourish, 
ended each note or letter ; but the outer address almost 
invariably had Charles Dickens on the corner, with one 
heavy stroke above and another underneath. As I have 
already noticed, the date was very explicit, giving the day 
of the week in full, and expressing the day of the month in 
words and not in numerals. Following the example of his 
father, quite a gentleman of the Old School, Mr. Dickens, 
in addressing a person, never used the familiar contraction 
" Esq.," but wrote " Esquire " in full. He generally used 



BEGGING LETTERS. 211 

thick note-paper with a blue tint, and so invariably wrote 
in blue ink that it is reasonable to suppose that he always 
travelled with a bottle of that fluid in his dressing-case. 
During his last visit to the United States, 186^-8, his 
friends noticed that, as usual, his notes were written with 
blue ink. 

His familiar friends here will acknowledge that Mr. 
Dickens possessed the eloquence du billet in no limited 
degree. Byron, Scott, Southe}^ and Moore have largely 
exhibited his agreeable faculty in our own time. His letters 
overflowed with delightful badinage, were full of expression, 
touched a great many subjects with graceful ease and live- 
liness, and contained frequent passages, thrown oflf at the 
moment, which would have charmed multitudes of his 
readers had he chosen to reserve them for his printed pages. 
I have heard it said that Thomas Hood's almost habitual 
silence in societ3^ was caused b}^ a fear of letting his good 
things escape in compan}^, instead of their being reserved 
for his writings ; but Dickens had none of this reticence, 
for he had great animal spirits, and the prodigality of his 
genius was apparently exhaustless. 

Manj' of his epistles, and these the briefest, cost him a 
good deal. Though he waged perpetual war against those 
audacious, plausible, and unconquerable Ishmaelites, the 
professional begging-letter rogues and mendicants of 
London, he was constantly their victim. The}' beset him, 
in all manner of ways, with all sorts of applications, and so 
tende rwas this man's heart that, even when more than half 
suspecting that he was solicited by an old hand with a new 
stor}?-, he generally jnelded. He was remonstrated with 
by some of his friends at times, and would say, with a smile, 
" Well, I may be taken in ; but suppose this poor man's 
sad story were true, could I ever forgive m3^self for hav- 
ing not attended to it?" So he would write a courteous 
little letter, regretting that his own means, with many 



212 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

imperative demands on them, prevented his being as 
useful as he desired, but begging that his correspondent 
" would accept the enclosed," — usually a five or even a ten 
pound Bank of England note. I have seen some of these 
little billets in the archives of autograph collectors (the 
beggars knew that a note from Charles Dickens would 
always obtain them a shilling or two from Mr. Waller, the 
autograph dealer in Fleet street), and I have heard of more. 
In one case, a truly deserving person whom he had thus 
relieved, and who lived to return the money, under im- 
proved circumstances, told me, with a sob in his voice, that 
Mr. Dickens, who saw him personally, had liberall3^ relieved 
him as if he were receiving instead of conferring a favor. I 
w^onder how far the actual liberality of the pietists, who 
presume to doubt whether Mr. Dickens " had religion," has 
extended, in cases like the above, to persons who sought 
relief from them ? " What I give," said a miserly plate- 
holder at a charity sermon, — "What /give, is nothing to 
nobody." Many persons who are '' professors " can say 
the same, no doubt. 

Here I may as well introduce some letters from Mr. 
Dickens, — of " no consequence," as Mr. Toots would say, 
but more or less characteristic. 

The following letter from Mr, Dickens, written after the 
completion of Pickwick and when about half of Oliver 
Twist had appeared, in monthly instalments, requires a 
slight introduction. A friend of mine who was " going to 
the bar," as a nominal law-student in the Inner Temple, 
London, qualified himself, in the then usual manner, not by 
mastering Coke upon Littleton, or Blackstone's Commenta- 
ries, but by eating three dinners " in Hall," each term. He 
privately corresponded with the proprietor of the news- 
paper in his native town. While Pickwick was in progress, 
there was considerable curiosity to learn who its author 
was, and at Christmas, 1837, the future barrister sent some 
of the gossip of the clubs on that subject, which my editorial 



CORRESPONDENCE. 213 

friend was only too glad to print, thoughtlessly retaining 
the signature. The newspaper accidentally fell into Mr. 
Dickens's hands. At that time (January, 1838,) he was in 
Yorkshire collecting materials relative to the seminaries 
there, of which Dotheboj-s Hall became the representative, 
in prose fiction. He wrote a note, short and sharp, dated, 
" Darlington, Saturday morning," (the actual time was at 
the close of January, 1838,) declaring that, in no one par- 
ticular did the published "gossip" even approach correct- 
ness. — That Messrs. Chapman & Hall " were never persuaded 
with some difficult}^ to become the Pickwick publishers, but 
on the contrary first became known to me by waiting on me 
to propose the work ; that by the Pickwick Papers alone I 
have not netted between £2,000 and £3,000 ; that the sketch 
called "Watkins Tottle" never appeared in the Morning 
Chronicle ; that I am not now in the receipt of £3,000 a year ; 
and that Mr. Bentley does not give me £1,000 a year for edit- 
ing his Miscellany, and twenty guineas a sheet for what I 
write in it." 

This note was published, in the peccant journal, and the 
gentleman who had figured as " London Correspondent,'* 
peradventure, after consulting some of his friends, frankly 
wrote to Mr. Dickens, mentioning how, without his author- 
ity or knowledge, part of one of his private letters had been 
printed, with his signature, and how much he regretted that 
his careless gossip had annoyed a writer, whom he so greatly 
admired. This brought the following reply, prompt and 
courteous : 

48 Doughty Street, London, 
Friday, February lUh, 1838. 
Dear Sir : — I have to thank you very cordially for j^our 
letter of the tweltth, and to assure you that your explana- 
tion is quite satisfactory. 

I saw the paragraph in question during a*stay of a few 
minutes at Darlington in Yorkshire, and w^rote a hasty con- 
tradiction to the editor of the newspaper in which it ap- 



214 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

peared. It certainly contained nothing ill-natured or 
otfeusive, but I felt for the moment anno3^ed at my private 
aflairs being dragged before the public, and stated incor- 
rectly in every particular. 

Any impression of this kind is at once removed by 3^our 
frank and manl}^ letter, and I hasten to assure you that I 
care nothing for the paragraph since it has been the means 
of calling forth so polite and ready a communication. ' 

I am, Faithfully Yours, 

Charles Dickens. 

As we are "nothing, if not critical," I mtxy mention that 
Mr. Dickens was mistaken in locating Darlington, "in 
Yorkshire," — for the simple reason that it is in the County- 
Palitine of Durham. I may add that in fitness of time, the 
gentleman to whom this gracious letter was addressed, 
became a barrister-at-law, was introduced to Dickens by 
Serjeant Talfourd, became very intimate with him, has long 
been a Queen's counsel, in high practice, and is even in a 
fair way to a seat on the judicial bench. Mr. Dickens's 
autograph letter has remained in my possession, my friend 
not having cared to preserve it among his archives, while, as I 
had not only suggested but written his letter of apology 
to " Boz," I considered myself entitled to retain the reply. 
The letter is not without interest, from its early date, and 
also as it breathes the frankness and courtesy which, 
through life, were among its author's recognized charac- 
teristics. 

To a little later period belongs the following communica- 
tion, which was given to me by Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, 
with whom I was well acquainted. The 3^ear is omitted in 
the original, but can readily be ascertained from the 
context : 

Devonshire Terrace, 

Tuesday/, April the Twenty-seventh, [1840.] 
My Dear Talfourd : — Many thanks for the Sonnet. Do 
you know Ewart ? I want, on behalf of an oppressed 
lady, to remind him of a promise he made her relative to 



MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. 215 

the presentation of a petition to the House. I don't like 
to approach a man of his kidney, without an introduction. 
Can you give me one in a couple of lines ? 

Faithfully Always, 

Charles Dickens. 

The Sonnet is to be found in Talfourd's Poems, and is 
as follows : 

TO CHARLES DICKENS 

ON HIS " OLIVER TWIST." 

Not only with the Author's happiest praisG 
■ Thy work should be rewarded : 'tis akin 
To DEEDS of men, Who scorning ease to win 
A blessing for the wretched, pierce the maze 
Which heedless ages spread around the ways 
Where fruitful Sorrow tracks its parent Sin ; 
Content to listen to the wildest din 
Of passion, and on fellest shapes to gaze, 
So they might earn the power which intercedes 
With the bright world and melt it;for within 
Wan Childhood's squalid haunts, where basest needs 
Make tyranny more bitter, at thy call 
An angel face with patient sweetness sheds 
For infant suffering to the heart of all. 

These lines, at once vague and unintelligible, are so 
simply complimentary in fact, that one cannot wonder at 
their being merely acknowledged by their recipient. Tal- 
fourd was addicted to this mode of flattering his friends. 
Out of his fourteen sonnets, published in the volume which 
contains Talfourd's three tragedies, six are personal, — ad- 
dressed to Dr. Valpy, his schoolmaster ; to Macready, on 
his performance of " Werner "; to Macready, on the birth 
of his first child, in recollection of his performance of 
" Yirginius "; to Charles Dickens ; to Miss Adelaide Kem- 
ble, the singer, on her approaching retirement from the 
stage; and to Wordsworth, the poet, on his reception at 



216 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Oxford, in 1839, when he publicly received the honorary 
degree of D. C. L. 

Mr. Ewart, referred to in Mr. Dickens's note, was then 
M. P. for Wigan. He was son of a wealthy merchant in 
Liverpool, and was a barrister, though he did not practice. 
He was an extreme Liberal and deserves to be remem- 
bered on account of an Act, introduced by him and now in 
successful operation, for establishing Free Libraries in a 
large number of towns in England and Wales. Mr. Ewart, 
whose death occurred recently, was a liberal, well- 
meaning, respectable gentleman, whom Dickens need not 
have been shy of approaching, upon business, " without an 
introduction," but this was early in his career, for he 
soon became familiar with Lords and Commoners who 
expressed their satisfaction at being introduced to him. 

The most intimate and enduring friends whom Mr. 
Dickens cherished through life, were the late Mr. Serjeant 
Talfourd, and Mr. John Forster. Here is a playful little 
note to the former ; 

Devonshire Terrace, 
Tuesday, February Sixteen, 1841. 
My Dear Talfourd : — A friend of mine — a man you 
will say of most extraordinarj^ tastes — wants to go into 
the gallery of the House of Commons next Frida^^ Can 
you give me an order for that day, and will you send it 
by post ? 

Tell Mrs. Talfourd your Nickleby and Clock are in 
course of binding — by the slowest man in England. 
Faithfully yours, 

Charles Dickens. 



In order to obtain admission into the House of Lords or 
Commons, the " Strangers' Gallery " in each being very 
small, it is requisite to obtain an order signed by a peer or 
an M. P., as the case might be — with a certainty when a 
debate of any interest was anticipated, that only the order- 
holders, who had reached the closed door of the Gallery, 



WORKS OF THE CLOCK. 21Y 

long before the usual hour of its being opened, had any 
chance of admission. It has been stated, however, that a 
silver key, in the shape of half-a-crown, slyly slipped into 
the janitor's unreluctant hand, was an unerring " Open 
Sesame " to either gallery. Talfourd being the representa- 
tive of his native town of Reading, had the power of com- 
pljing with his friend's request. 

It appears from the following note, that the slowest book- 
binder in England had done his work at last. Mr. Dickens 
wrote : 

Ilonday, March Twenty-second, 1841. 
My Dear Talfourd : — That immortally sluggish binder 
has at length completed your Nickleb}^ which I pray you 
accept herewith. The two Clock volumes are in progress. 

The mention of them brings me to asking a favor of you. 
I must have the ivorks to dinner again. Will Saturday, 
April the Tenth, at a quarter past six, suit you ? and if 
so, will you on that day again kindl}^ do for me what no man 
can do so well, or with so much pleasure to all his hearers ? 
The celebration of the second volume entails these pains 
and penalties upon you. 

With best regards to Mrs. Talfourd and to Miss E. G., 
Believe me ever, 

My dear Talfourd, 

Faithfully yours, 

Charles Dickens. 
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. 



This letter will let the public into the heart of a little 
secret, not quite unknown to Mr. Dickens's friends. At that 
early period of his career, nearly thirty years ago, he used 
to take the opinion of some friends, "audience lit but few," 
upon unpublished portions of any work then in progress. 
Mr. Forster, the late Mr. Robert Bell, Mr. Frank Stone, and 
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, are believed to have been members of 
this boardof private criticism, which might have been called 
" Friends in Council. " Talfourd, who read very w^ell, despite 
of a curious lisp, always did his part to admiration. At the 



218 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKENS. 

date of this note, the first portion of Ilaster Humphrey's 
Clock, containing the story in which Little Nell is embalmed, 
had been completed, and Barnaby Budge was in course of 
publication. 

It was declared by Douglas Jerrold, that dinner-giving is 
such an established institution in England, that if an earth- 
quake were to destroy London, leaving Lord Macaulay's 
New Zealander sitting on the debris of St. Paul's, like Ma- 
rius amid the ruins of Carthage, no doubt a party of the 
survivors, assembling on Ludgate Hill, next day, would cele- 
brate the destructive catastrophe by a public dinner, amid 
the wreck of architecture. If the catastrophe had occurred 
when Mr. Dickens was near, assuredly he would have pur- 
chased a ticket, for, independent of thinking that the good 
things of life were not meant for the " unco guid " only, he 
was genially fond of celebrating the completion of each of 
his works, b}^ a good dinner to his friends. On the occasion 
in question "the ivories'^ evidently mean certain friends of 
the author, to whom Talfourd was to read new and unpub- 
lished portions of the story. This, as well as I remember, 
was the explanation given by Mr. Talfourd, from whom I 
received the autograph. 

What may have been written or printed on " the scrap 
of paper " alluded to in the following note, I do not recol- 
lect. The newspaper referred to, (published in the English 
town of Shrewsbury, which, by its quaint architecture and 
remarkably narrow and crooked streets, greatly attracted 
the attention of Nathaniel Hawthorne, when he visited it, 
in 1855,) was then edited by myself, and the Hues which 
Mr. Dickens was pleased to praise, written on the recent 
death of my daughter, a child of rare beauty and rich 
promise : 

Brodstans, Kent, 
Monday, Twenty-third August, 1841. 

Dear Sir : — T am much obliged to you for your letter, and 
the scrap of paper enclosed in it. I was aware of the im- 



A NEWSPAPER PHENOMENON. 219 

position soon after it was attempted, but had never seen 
the article. I can bear, like a good Christian, the not 
having any more of it. 

Let me thank you also for the newspaper I received from 
3'ou. I found some lines in its columns which afforded me 
very great pleasure in the perusal. 

Faithfully yours, 

Charles Dickens. 
Dr. Mackenzie. 

Among the " Curiosities of Literature," in which Mr. 
Dickens was interested, were what are known as "Mam- 
moth " American papers. I was able to supply him with 
some specimens of this gigantic class of Journalism. In a 
note, dated " First September, 1842," Mr. Dickens thus ac- 
knowledges the receipt of either Tlie Neiv Wo7'ld — or an 
enormous Brother Jonathan — which my old friend Major M. 
M. Noah, had sent to me from New York. Mr. Dickens 
wrote : " I am greatly obliged to you for your note and 
its accompanying Paper, which is indeed a phenomenon. 
The announcement you allude to [in America, of a new 
work by Mr. Dickens, which he had neither written nor 
intended to write,] had attracted my attention. We shall 
see a hundred others of the same famil}^, and shall con- 
tinue to see them until we die." 

Mr. Dickens's recollections of Brother Jonathan were not 
pleasant. In 1842, after the first visit to the United States, 
the late Mr. Isaac C. Pray, previousl}^ editor of the Boston 
Pearl, was in London, conducting a cheap evening paper, 
so very liberal in its politics, that even the Chartists thought 
it went too far. By ai3plication of what is figuratively des- 
ignated " oil of palm," he obtained proof-sheets of the 
'' American Notes" from some of the pressmen in Bradbury 
& Evans's printing office, and sent them to Boston, in ad- 
vance of the English book, in two volumes, the selling price 
of which was twenty-one shillings. Mr. Dickens had made 
arrangements with a New York publisher for the reproduc- 
tion of a fac-simile edition for America, but before the legi- 



220 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

timtite advance sheets arrived, the entire book was circulated 
throughout the United States, in a double number of Brother 
Jonathan, for six cents. Of course, this took the bloom 
from Mr. Dickens's peach. Mr. Lockhart has mentioned 
how, on several occasions, sheets of Sir Walter Scott's 
novels were surreptitiously obtained from Ballantyne's print- 
ing office, for American, French, and German publishers. 

Mr. Locke's celebrated "Moon Hoax," of which 1 sent a 
copy to Mr. Dickens, greatly interested and amused him. 
He acknowledged it, in a brisk little note, saying that 
he was at work when it reached him — that he carelessly 
looked into it, and was attracted by the matter-of-fact char- 
acter of the narrative — that he did not lay it down until 
he had read every line of it, and that, for the first ten 
minutes, he thought it really was, what it purported to be, 
a bond fide scientific report by Sir John Herschell, the 
astronomer. " Since Captain Lemuel Gulliver and Robinson 
Crusoe," he wrote, "there has not been any story so very 
like truth as this." I quote this sentence from Memory, 
having given the original letter to an autograph collector, — 
an indiscretion, I beg to inform all brethren of that craft, 
which I am determined never again to commit. 

The following note to Frank Stone, the painter, one of 
Dickens's most intimate friends, was written, as the date 
shows, immediately after that mysterious Wednesday, in 
1849, during the Epsom Races, when the Derby was won by 
the Flying Dutchman. The first paragraph alludes to this : 

Devonshire Terrace, 

Twenty-fourth May, 1849. 
My Dear Stone: — I "took" a good deal yesterday — 
but not in the way of odds. I understand from my ladies 
that not much was taken at Aretbura's last night. 

It is most annoying that on Tuesday I shall be at Ayles- 
bury, down at old Nugent's. I come back, however, that 
evening, and am your man when ever you like afterward. 

Yours affectionately, 

Charles Dickens. 
Frank Stone, Esquire. 



HIS POETRY. 221 

" Old "N'ugent " was a younger brotlier of the first Duke of 
Buckingham and Chandos, and succeeded to an Irish Barony, 
in 1813. He had been M. P. for Aylesbury, near which 
town was his small but beautiful estate. One of his works 
bears the alliterative title of " Legends of the Library at 
Lilies, by the Lord and Lady There." Lord Nugent was 
fond of literary society, was hospitable on rather limited 
means, and was sixty years old when Mr. Dickens wrote. 
He died in the following 3"ear, without a direct male heir, 
and the title became extinct. 

None of Mr. Dickens's letters, in this chapter, have been 
previouslj^ published. They are printed from the originals. 



CHAPTER XYL 

POETRY IN PROSE. — THACKERAY'S OPINION. — RYTHMICAL 
LANGUAGE. — EXAMPLES FROM SOUTHEY, SHELLEY, AND 
DICKENS. — LITTLE NELL's FUNERAL. — LESSON OF DEATH 
TO LIFE. — SMIKE'S GRAVE-STONE. — NIAGARA. — HYMN OF 
THE LABORERS. — A WORD IN SEASON. 

It does not follow, as many think, that Poetry must consist 
of metre, measured language, rhyme, or rythm. There are 
poets, in prose as well as in verse. There is the truth, as 
well as the pathetic tenderness of poetry, in that short 
and simple verse, in the New Testament, " Jesus wept," 
which shows how entirely, how devotedly, the Saviour 
grafted our humanity upon His divinity. Many a man has 
unconsciously expressed the sentiments of poetry, in speech 
or writing. As Wordsworth put it, 

Many are the Poets that are sown 
By Nature ; men endowed with highest gifts. 
The vision and the faculty divine ; 
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse, 
14 



222 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

and Byron, evidently paraphrasing those lines, puts into 
the mouth of Dante, the poet-sire of Italy, the following 
declaration : 

Many are poets who have never penned 
Their inspiration, and perchance the best ; 

******* 
Many are poets, but without the name. 

On this principle, Charles Dickens undoubtedly was a 
poet. He has not mere passages, but scenes, full of the 
most sensitive, natural, and impressive poetry. "But," I 
have heard critics say, "he never printed them as poetry." 
My friends, whether the window through which the glory 
of sunlight comes to us, be circular, square, or oval, or 
whether it be set in the Egyptian, the Grecian, the Gothic, 
or the Log-cabin order of architecture, the shape of the 
medium does not concern us so much as the light itself does, 

As sunshine, broken in the rill, 
Though turned astray, is sunshine still, 

and what light is to the material world, poetry is to the 
intellectuah Thackeray, who was honest with all his 
cynicism, acknowledged the claim of Dickens to be ranked 
among the poets. Mr. Hodder has recorded that, when the 
fifth number of Domhey and Son, closed with the death 
of Little Paul, Mr. Thackeray appeared electrified at the 
thought that there was one man living whose pathos could 
so thoroughly stir the depths of his soul, and rushing down 
to the office of Punch, where the portly editor, Mr. Mark 
Lemon, was correcting manuscript, dashed that fifth num- 
ber down on the table, with startling vehemence, and ex- 
claimed: "There's no writing against such power as this — 
one has no chance I Read that chapter describing young 
Paul's death : it is unsurpassed — it is stupendous !" This, 
a rival's praise, was perhaps the highest tribute that an 
author could have received. 



li 



POETRY IN PROSE. 223 

Many other scenes in Dickens's works are not merely 
poetic, but constitute poetry of a high order. The storm 
and wreck, off Yarmouth, in David Gopperfield, are de- 
scribed with epic power, and the death of Little Nell will 
occur to every reader. It was noticed, many years ago, 
that " a curious circumstance is observable in a great por- 
tion of the scenes of tragic power, pathos and tenderness 
contained in various parts of Mr. Dickens's works, which 
it is possible may have been the result of harmonious acci- 
dent, and the author not even subsequently conscious of it. 
It is that they are written in blank verse, of irregular metre 
and rythm, which Southey, and Shelley, and some other 
poets, have occasionally adopted." In Southey's " Thalaba," 
for example, is this fine expression upon Night : 

How beautiful is Night ! 

A dewy freshness fills the silent air, 
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain 

Breaks the serene of heaven. 
In full orbed glory yonder Moon divine 

Rolls through the dark blue depths. 

Beneath her steady ray 

The desert circle spreads, 
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. 

How beautiful is Night ! 

Shelley's "Queen Mab " opens with this stanza, in the same 
manner : 

How wonderful is Death, 

Death and his brother Sleep ! 
One, pale as yonder waning moon, 

With lips of lurid blue ; 

The other, rosy as the morn 
When throned on ocean's wave 

It blushes o'er the world : 
Yet both so passing beautiful. 

Here, from Dickens, is the description of Little Nell's fune- 
ral, which is unconsciously rythmical. It is printed, as 



224 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

prose, in The Old Curiosity Shop, aud seems as if it had 
spontaneously ran into metre. Only two trifling words (in 
and its) have been omitted ; e'en has been put for almost, 
and grari'dames has been put for grandmothers. Everything 
else is unchanged; not a word transposed, not even a 
comma altered in the punctuation; here it is, printed as 

poetry : 

LITTLE NELL'S FUNERAL. 

And now the bell — the bell 
She had so often heard by night and day, 

And listened to with solemn pleasure, 

E'en as a living voice — 
Rung its remorseless toll for her, 

So young, so beautiful, so good. 

Decrepit age, and vigorous life, 
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy, 
Poured forth — on crutches, in the pride of strength 

And health, in the full blush 
Of promise, in the mere dawn of life — 
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there, 
Whose eyes were dim 
And senses failing — 
Gran' dames, -^ho might have died ten years ago, 
And still been old — the deaf, the blind, the lame. 

The palsied, 
The living dead in many shapes and forms, 
To see the closing of this early grave. 

What was the death it would shut in. 
To that which still could crawl and creep above it ! 

Along the crowded path they bore her now ; 

Pure as the new-fallen snow 
That covered it ; whose day on earth 

Had been as fleeting. 
Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven 
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot, 

She passed again, and the old church 

Received her in its quiet shade. 

Here, too, is the brief homily with which the description of 
the funeral closes : 



DEATH'S LESSON. — NIAGARA. 225 

DEATH'S LESSON. 
Oil ! it is hard to take 
The lesson that such deaths will teach, 
But let no man reject it, 
!For it is one that all must learn 
And is a mighty universal Truth. 
Wlien Death strikes down the innocent and young, 
For every fragile form from which 
He lets the parting spirit free, 
A hundred virtues rise, 
In shapes of mercy, charity, and love. 
To walk the world and bless it. 
Of every tear 
That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, 
Some good is born, some gentle nature comes. 

Akin to this, and also without the alteration of a word, is 
the concluding paragraph of Nicholas Nicklehy : 

SMIKE'S GRAVE-STONE. 
The grass was green above the dead boy's grave, 
Trodden by feet so small and light, 
That not a daisy drooped its head 

Beneath their pressure. 
Through all the spring and summer time 
Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, 
Rested upon the stone. 

Even in the American Notes, rather an unlikely deposi- 
tory for poetic thought and expression, is a passage, upon 
Niagara, very much in the same manner ; 

NIAGARA. 
I think in every quiet season now, 
Still do these waters roll, and leap, and roar, 

And tumble, all day long ; 
Still are the rainbows spanning them 

A hundred feet below. 
Still when the sun is on them, do they shine 

And glow like molten gold. 
Still when the day is gloomy do they fall 

Like snow, or seem to crumble away, 

Like the front of a great chalk cliff. 
Or roll adown the rock like dense white smoke. 



226 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

But always does this mighty stream appear 

To die as it comes down. 
And always from the unfathomable grave 
Arises that tremendous ghost of spray 
And mist which is never laid : 

Which has haunted this place 
With the same dread solemnity, 

Since darkness brooded on the deep, 
And that first flood before the Deluge — Light, 

Came rushing on Creation 

At the word of God. 

Of actual verses written by Mr. Dickens, not much is 
known. In Pickivick, he introduced two simple l^^rics, 
"A Christmas Carol," and "The Ivy Green," both of which 
were set to music and are yet occasionally sung by melodi- 
ous bucolics. In the opera of " Village Coquettes," which 
though published seems to have dropped out of sight, 
were several songs — as usual, it may be presumed, mere 
vehicles for the music. But Mr. Dickens, an English 
authority states, was fond of versifying, and numerous 
of his productions were printed, anonymously, in different 
periodicals. 

The Daily News, the London paper of which he was first 
editor, forabrief time, states that, on February 14th, 184G, 
it published the following, elicited by a speech at one of 
the night meetings of the wives of agricultural laborers in 
Wiltshire, held to petition for free trade : 

THE HYMN OF THE WILTSHIRE LABORERS. 

" Don't you all think that we have a great need to cry to our God 
to put it in the hearts of our greaseous Queen and her members of 
Parlerment to grant us free bread !" — Luci/ Simpkins, at Brem Hill. 

Oh God, who by Thy Prophet's hand 

Did'st smite the rocky brake, 
Whence water came at Thy command, 

The people's thirst to slake ; 
Strike now, upon this granite wall. 

Stern, obdurate, and high, 
And let some drops of pity fall 

For us who starve and die ! 



A WORD IN SEASON. 22*7 

The God, who took a little child 

And set him in the midst, 
And promised him His mercy mild, 

As, by Thy Son, Thou did'st : 
Look down upon our children dear, 

So gaunt, so cold, so spare, 
And let their images appear 

"Where Lords and Gentry are ! 

Oh God, teach them to feel how we, 

When our poor infants droop, 
Are weakened in our trust in Thee, 

And how our spirits stoop : 
For, in Th/y^ rest, so bright and fair. 

All tears and sorrows sleep : 
And their young looks, so full of care, 

Would make Thine angels weep ! 

The God, who with His finger drew 

The Jvidgment coming on. 
Write for these men, what must ensue. 

Ere many years be gone ! 
Oh God, whose bow is in the sky. 

Let them not brave and dare, 
Until they look (too late) on high 

And see an Arrow there ! 

Oh God, remind them ! In the bread 

They break upon the knee. 
These sacred words may yet be read, 

" In memory of Me !" 
Oh God, remind them of His sweet 

Compassion for the poor, 
And how He gave them Bread to eat, 

And went from door to door. 

The same journal has rescued the following from an 
Annual edited by Lady Blessington, in 1844, and written 
by Mr. Dickens. It is an apologue at once graceful and 
shrewd, somewhat in the manner of Leigh Hunt, with 
a little of Thomas Hood's familiar flavor. Its author 
entitled it; 



228 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



A WORD IN SEASON. 

They have a superstition in the East, 

That Allah written on a piece of paper 
Is better unction tliau can come of priest, 

Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper ; 
Holding that any scrap which bears that name, 

In any characters, its front imprest on, 
Shall help the finder through the purging flame, 

And give his toasted feet a place to rest on. 

Accordingly, they make a mighty fuss 

With every wretched tract and fierce oration, 
And hoard the leaves ; for they are not, like us, 

A highly civilized and thinking nation ; 
And always stooping in the miry ways 

To look for matter of this earthly leaven. 
They seldom, in their dust-exploring days, 

Have any leisure to look up to Heaven, 

So have I known a country on the earth 

Where darkness sat upon the living waters. 
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth. 

Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters ; 
And yet, where they who should have ope'd the door 

Of charity and light for all men's finding. 
Squabbled for words upon the altar floor. 

And rent the Book, in struggles for the binding. 

The gentlest man among these pious Turks, 

God's living image ruthlessly defaces ; 
Their best High Churchman, with no faith in works. 

Bowstrings the virtues in the market-places.^ 
The Christian pariah, whom both sects curse .^ — 

(They curse all other men, and curse each othe^^N 
Walks through the world not very much the worse. 

Does all the good he can, and loves his brother. 

Except that the fifth line in the last stanza is curiously 
defective in rythm, this poem might be conceded perfect in 
its way. Like many other things by the same author, it 
was a plea for Charity and Toleration. 



CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE. 229 



CHAPTER XYIL 

LITTLE DOHRTT. — THE CmCUMLOCUTION OFFICE. — HARD TIMES. 

— TALE OF TWO CITIES. GREAT EXPECTATIONS. NEW 

CHRISTMAS STORIES. — OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. — AMENDE TO 
THE JEWS. — SYSTEMATIC BUSINESS HABITS. — DEALINGS WITH 
AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. 

In June, 1857, having been published, in the usual serial 
form. Little Dorrit was completed. It had several objects: 
The How-not-to-do-it sj^stem of the British government de- 
partments, all of which he ^Cise^l together under the title 
of " The Circumlocution Office ;" the discouragement given, 
in the shape of delay and costs, to inventors who wanted 
patents in the British islands ; the evil effects of imprison- 
ment for debt, particularly in the cases where the victims 
were wholly and hopelessly unable to discharge the claims 
upon them ; and the homage which Society delights to pay 
to mere wealth, or the appearance of it, represented b}^ such 
persons as Mr. Merdle or the Veneering family. The assault 
upon the Circumlocution Office brought the Edinhiu^gh Re- 
view into the field, for the defence, this periodical, once so 
powerful, when it had assailed the wrong, now asserting — 
that the adoption of the penny postage plan, and Rowland 
Hill's own appointment to superintend its working, were 
proofs against Dickens's " rash and wholesale satire." Mr. 
Dickens answered, at some length, in Household Words, re- 
ferring to the notoriety of the fact that for years after, as 
well as before, the penny postage scheme was established, the 
Post Office vehemently opposed it — that Mr. Hill was not 
allowed to have anything to do with its working until 3^ears 
after it commenced — that he was fin all}^ pressed on the Gov- 
ernment by public opinion — and that, after all, instead of 



230 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

being Postmaster General, or at least Secretary, he was smn^^- 
gled in as Secretar3^ to the Postmaster, only. Lord Deciraus, 
Mr. Tite Barnacle & Co., still remain in office. There is no 
occasion to be critical upon Little Dorrit — except to say that 
she is the most devoted and delightfal of daughters, and 
that, from first to last, whether as the mendicant prisoner 
in the Marshalsea or the rich man in society, the character 
of her father is wonderfully well sustained. It is made of 
numerous delicate touches, each helping towards the per- 
fecting of it. 

Hard Times had previously been published in " House- 
hold Words." Every one knows Gradgrind, that man of 
facts ; boasting Bounderby ; light-e3^ed Bitzer ; Mrs. Sparsit, 
who had genteel connections ; excellent Sleary, the circus- 
man ; poor Louisa Gradgrind, and Sissy Jupe, and those 
two tragic personages, Stephen Blackpool, who declares it 
"aw a muddle! fro' first to last, a muddle," and his poor 
friend Rachel, who, less fortunate, lived on to work and 
mourn. The circus scenes in this story are equal to the 
theatre scenes in Nichlehy. No wonder, for Mr. James T. 
Fields relates of the author, " If he contemplated writing 
* Hard Times,' he arranged with the master of Astle3^'s cir- 
cus to spend many hours behind the scenes with the riders 
and among the horses ; and if the composition of the ' Tale 
of Two Cities ' were occupjdng his thoughts, he could banish 
himself to France for two years to prepare for that great 
work." 

The other work here referred to, the Tale of Two Cities, 
which are London and Paris, appeared in "All the Year 
Round." Its main idea was suggested, Mr. Dickens says, 
while, with his children and friends, he was acting in Mr. Wil- 
kie Collins's drama of the " Frozen Deep." One of his hopes, 
he tells us, was to add something to the popular and pictu- 
resque means of understanding that terrible time, though 
no one can hope to add any thing to the philosophy of Mr. 
Carlyle's wonderful book. " The idea," he adds, " through- 



TALE OF TWO CITIES. 231 

out its execution, has bad complete possession of me ; I 
have so far verified what is done and suffered in these 
pages, as that I have certainly done and suffered it all 
myself Whenever any reference (however slight) is made 
here to the condition of the French people before or durnig 
the Revolution, it is truly made, on the faith of trustworthy 
witnesses." In the whole range of fiction, wide as that 
realm is, there is not to be found any account of the French 
Revolution, its causes, and its action, so truthful, so power- 
ful as this. Had Mr. Dickens written nothing but this, so 
intense and so correct, the most exacting critic might sa}^ 
" This is a master-piece." Mr. Richard Grant White, who 
has given us a reliable edition of Shakespeare, does justice 
to this story and pronounces it "so noble in its spirit, 
so grand and graphic in its stj^le, and filled with a pathos so 
profound and simple, that it deserves and will surely take 
a place among the great serious works of imagination." 
The character of Sidney Carton, the castaway, who with 
equal simplicity and sublimity of thought and act, realizes 
the solemn aphorism " Greater love hath no man than this, 
that he lay down his life for his friend." Self-wrecked and 
self-devoted, this man does, in fiction, what, I do believe, 
knowing what sacrifices it has made, Humanity is capable 
of doing. I thought once, that poetical justice ouojht to 
have been exercised on the fortunes or the person of that 
legal brain-sucker, Mr. Stry ver, — but I abandoned that idea, 
long since. Mosquitoes live and die, and no one thinks of 
their obsequies. No doubt, when Sidney Carton disap- 
peared, Stryver, the "lion " for whom, as he had been "pro- 
vider" (so naturalists call the jackal), perished for want of 
food. It is gratifying to think that Barrister Stryver, de- 
prived of Carton's aid, must have sank by force of gravita- 
tion, into the ranks of the Briefless. 

There were two other works, which, like this powerful 
French story, first appeared in "All the Year Round." 
These are a series of desultory papers, de omnibus rebus et 



232 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

quibusdam aliis, entitled The Uncommercial Traveller. 
Almost to the last, Mr. Dickens was occasionally contrib- 
uting to this collection. The other, a tale entitled Great 
Expectations, commenced towards the close of 1860, had its 
scene in London and the Essex Marshes. There are some 
good characters here. Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, is nat- 
ural to a degree, — uneducated, but a thorough gentleman in 
principal and action. Pumblechook is a common individ- 
ual, — life-like, but unpleasant. Jaggers, the lawyer, and 
his clerk — that wide-a-wake Wemmick, in whose mind the 
propriety of realizing " portable property " is a decided 
principle, — are novelties, to a degree. The death of Provis, 
the convict, in Xewgate, is- in Dickens's best manner : — 
he died in his bed, but was liable to be hanged for hav- 
ins: committed the terrible crime of returning from trans- 
portion. My own opinion, morally if not legally asserted, 
is that when Law has a hold upon a man, for offence 
committed, Law ought to hold him — if it can. A man's 
natural instinct, whether innocent or guilt}^, is to be un- 
fettered in limb, uncontrolled in liberty. The custom, if 
a convict escape from prison, and is recaptured, is to sen- 
tence him to an additional term ; if he escape from ban- 
ishment, to take his life, — ^just as, in Venetian history, 
'■Foscari returning from Candia, whither he had been 
banished, makes his last escape, by death. There is 
an issue, between the jailer and the prisoner. It is the 
duty of the jailer to provide safe custody: it is the 
instinct, I think the right, of the prisoner to regain his lib- 
ert}^, if he can. In escaping, he but fulfils the principle of 
manhood, which prompts him to become free. 

In his periodical, for several years, was given a Christmas 
number ; in which, though the master's hand was occasion- 
ally observable, the greater portion was by other writers. 
These were variously entitled : The Wreck of the Golden 
Mary, A Message from the Sea, (also dramatized, by Charles 
Dickens and Wilkie Collins,) The Perils of Certain English 



OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 233 

Prisoners, Tom Tiddler's Ground, A House to Let, The 
Haunted House, The Holly Tree Inn, Seven Poor Travellers, 
Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, Some- 
body's Luggage, Mugb}^ Junction, Dr. Marigold's Prescrip- 
tions, and No Thoroughfare. The last named concluded the 
series, with, as a novel reason for discontinuance, the state- 
ment that the supplement had been only too successful ! All 
of these stories are to be found in Petersons' editions, but all 
that Mr. Dickens has acknowledged are the portions entitled 
Somebody's Luggage, Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings and Legacy, 
Dr. Marigold, Two Ghost Stories, The Boy at Mugby, The 
Seven Poor Travellers, and the Holly Tree Lm, which last in- 
cludes the narrative, by Cobbs, the " Boots," of the Courtship 
and Elopement of Master Harry Walmer, and his little 
Cousin Norah. Ah, how exquisite was the author's reading 
of that very impossible but thoroughly romantic love-tale I 
Who did not, in spirit, go with that soft-hearted chambermaid, 
who, as she peeped through the ke3'-hole, called out, "It's a 
shame to part 'em !" So it would have been, had the lovers 
been a dozen or fourteen years older. 

The next and last completed work was Our Mutual 
Friend, also a serial. The "Postscript in lieu of Preface," 
is dated September 2d, 1865, and expresses a very strong 
opinion of the English Poor Law and its working. The ob- 
ject of the tale, however, was to show, in the gradually 
developed character of Bella Wilfer, the change, by love, 
from selfishness to its reverse. That young lady has 
some trials to bear, but they improve her. Silas Wegg is 
carefully drawn, and scarcely too extravagantly. The " Bof- 
finses " are perfect in their simplicity and shrewdness. The 
Wilfer household, too, is cleverly sketched. The Yeneerings, 
name and all, are poor, and unworthy of the labor bestowed 
upon them. The Schoolmaster supplies the tragedy. Fas- 
cination Fledgeby, not at all natural, is worthy of the pun- 
ishment Lammle gives him. Riah, the benevolent Jew, 
seems to have been introduced as an offset to Faoin, in 



234 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Oliver Twist, and under peculiar circumstances. In June, 
1863, a Jewish lady, name undisclosed, complained that, in 
the character of Fagin, " Charles Dickens the large-hearted, 
whose works plead so eloquently for the oppressed of his 
country, has encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised 
Hebrew." In his reply, which enclosed a subscription to some 
Jewish charity, Mr. Dickens said, " Fagin, in Oliver Tioist, 
is a Jew because it unfortunately was true, at the time to 
w^hich that story refers, that that class of criminal almost 
invariably was a Jew. But surely no sensible man or woman 
of 3^our persuasion can fail to observe — firstly, that all the 
rest of the wicked dramatis personse are Christians ; and, 
secondly, that he is called the 'Jew,' not because of his 
religion, but because of his race. If I were to write a story 
in which I described a Frenchman or a Spaniard as the 
' Roman Catholic,' I should do a very indecent and unjusti- 
fiable thing ; but I make mention of Fagin as the Jew be- 
cause he is one of the Jewish people, and because it conveys 
that kind of idea of him which I should give my readers of 
a Chinaman by calling him a Chinese." He added, " I have 
no feeling towards the Jewish people but a friendly one. 
I always speak well of them, whether in public or in private, 
and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect 
good faith in such transactions as T have ever had with them ; 
and in my ' Child's History of England' I have lost no op- 
portunity of setting forth their cruel persecutions in old 
times." The reply to another letter from the same lady on 
the 14th July, 1863, was the character of Riah, in " Our 
Mutual Friend," and some favorable sketches of Jewish 
character and the lower class published in some articles in 
All the Year Round. In acknowledgment, his fair corres- 
pondent presented him with a copy of Benisch's " Hebrew 
and English Bible," with this inscription : — " Presented to 
Charles Dickens, Esq., in grateful and admiring recognition 
of his having exercised the noblest quality man can possess 
— that of atoning for an injury as soon as conscious of hav- 



AS EDITOR. 235 

ing inflicted it. By a Jewess." In a letter, written at 
Bradford, Yorkshire, on " Friday, First March, 1867," he 
thanked her, sa^^ng, " the terms in which you send me that 
mark of your remembrance are more gratifying to me than 
I can possibly express to you ; for they assure me that 
there is nothing but goodwill felt between me and a people 
for whom I have a real regard, and to whom I would not wil- 
fully have given an offence or done an injustice for any 
worldly consideration." 

Let me close this chapter, in which mention is so often 
made of the periodicals with which Mr. Dickens was asso- 
ciated for so many years, by saying that they really were con- 
ducted by him. For many j^ears, he was assisted b}^ Mr. Wills, 
as well as latterly by his own eldest son, now thirt}^ years of 
age, and a good writer, but his own surveillance over his 
weekly was constant and thorough. A writer in Every 
Saturday, who is believed to have been Mr. James T. Fields, 
thus does justice to his friend : 

Notwithstanding that for the last twenty-five or thirty 
years, Dickens has been one of the best-known and most- 
talked-about men in the world, he has been most curiously 
misunderstood on two or three points. For instance in this 
country it was supposed, until recently, that he had made 
two or three fortunes and spent them ; that he was loose in 
money matters, and was always laboring under "pecuniary 
difficulties," like his own Mr. Micawber. That he realized 
large sums from his writings is true enough ; as for the rest, 
nothing could be further from the facts. Dickens was a 
thorough business man. His precision and accuracy in all 
commercial matters were marvellous. In spite of his great 
industry, he would have failed to produce so many volumes 
as he has, if he had not worked with system. The same 
clear-headed method which guided him in his literary labors, 
he brought to bear in his business relations. Loose in 
money matters 1 More than one literary brother, dying, left 
Charles Dickens sole executor of his will, knowing that in 
those hands his scant estate would be stretched to the ut- 
most to cover the wants of wife and little ones. How care- 
fully these pathetic accounts were kept, is shown by certain 
private ledgers at Gad's Hill, written in that peculiar blue 



236 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

ink familiar to those who have had dealings with Dickens's 
manuscripts. 

It is singular that, being "a thorough business man," 
Mr. Dickens should have totally misunderstood his position 
as author in the United States. Early in 1867, was pub- 
lished a letter, as from Mr. Dickens to an American publish- 
ing house, abounding in expressions of peculiar gratification 
at the display of their honorable dealing, in remitting to 
him the sum of two hundred pounds, as part profits of their 
edition of his works, at the same time implying that such 
paj^ment was so extraordinary as to be looked upon as an 
isolated act of honesty on the part of American publishers. 
He wrote : " I think you know how high and far beyond 
the money's worth I esteem this act of manhood, delicacy, 
and honor. I have never derived greater pleasure from the 
receipt of money in all my life." This letter drew some 
comment in the papers, and also from Sampson Low, 
London, who stated, in a letter published in The Pall Mall 
Gazette, that he had, " as the agent of Messrs. Harper & 
Brothers, paid to Mr. Charles Dickens many thousands of 
pounds for and on account of his works, when no other 
publishing house had paid anything.'^ Next, it appeared 
that the old Philadelphia firm of Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 
without any solicitation, had sent Mr. Dickens £50 for 
Pickwick ; had paid £60 for advance manuscript of the lat- 
ter part of Oliver Twist; had offered £100 for advance 
sheets of Nicholas Nicklehy, which was not accepted ; had 
paid £112 10s. for the Old Curiosity Shop, and £107 10s. 
for Barnahy Pudge. Mr. Dickens declined accepting for 
Martin Chuzzlewit twice as much (that is, £440,) as they 
had paid for the two last, so they reprinted that work, as 
well as David Copper field and Dombey and Son, without any 
arrangement with him. 

In 1851, all these stereotj'-pe plates, with their illustrations 
on steel and wood, then forming the' only complete edition 
of Dickens in America, were sold to T. B. Peterson, who 
subsequently purchased, from Harper & Brothers, A Tale 



REPRINTS. 23t 

of Tioo Cities, Great Expectations, Bleak House, Little 
Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend, for the sole continuous 
right to republish which in the United States, that house- 
had paid £1,000, £1,250, £400, £250, and £1,000— making 
£3,900, which, added to £330, paid by Mr. Lea's house, 
make a total of £4,230 in gold, paid to Mr. Dickens by 
American publishers, before he had received £200 from the 
liberality of a Boston house, on their publishing a Diamond 
edition of his works. 

Mr. Dickens subsequently acknowledged that, for The 
Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual 
Friend, Messrs. Harper had paid him £3,250. Moreover, 
they expended over $2,000 in having sixty-four original 
designs made and engraved on wood for the first of these 
three stories ; and also had twent^^-seven original designs 
made and engraved for Great Expectations.'^ The cost of 
this, and of purchasing the original right exclusively to 
publish in the United States, was defrayed by the Messrs. 
Harper, in connection with the Messrs. Peterson; who 
naturally considered that they had expended all this money 
in getting such an equivalent for copyright, in this country, 
as Mr. Dickens could sell. To this has to be added £1,000 
paid Mr. Dickens, in 1859, by the enterprising proprietor 
of the New York Ledger, for a tale entitled " Hunted Down,'^ 
which, per arrangement between Mr. Bonner and the Messrs. 
Peterson, is only printed in their editions of Dickens. 

So, Mr. Dickens had received £5,230, in hard cash, before 
the £200 from Boston, which he acknowledged as if it were 
the first and only money he had from the United States, 
had reached him. He had sold an exclusive interest in nine 
of his works — which means an equitable right, as against 
all other American publishers — to certain firms here, but 
subsequently transferred another exclusive interest to other 
publishers I 

* These original illustrations are copyrighted, and can only be 
had in Petersons' editions of the works of Charles Dickens. 

15 



238 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER XYIIL 

CHARLES DICKENS'S NAMES. — ODD NAMES. — FUTILITY OF 

PERSONAL ARGUMENT. — RETORT ON LOCKHART. MAKING 

FRIENDS. — MR. REE-ACK. — LORD CAMPBELL. — TEMPERATE 

HABITS. — UNDERVALUING SHAKESPEARE. WORDSWORTH 

AND DICKENS. — PHILADELPHIA STREETS, — PERSONAL TASTES. 
— PITY FOR THE FALLEN. — TOWN AND COUNTRY.— LONGING 
FOR SUDDEN DEATH. — JOHN DICKENS AND SHERIDAN. — 
CHILDREN. — DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 

More than a quarter of a century back, Mr. Dickens was 
taking a long walk in the country with a friend, and among 
other topics, Christian names were spoken of The friend 
said, it was curious that in English history, literature, 
science, theology, and art, the greater number of persons 
who had distinguished themselves, had only a single 
Christian name. In literature, there were John Gower, 
Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Francis 
Bacon, John Milton, Samuel Butler, Andrew Marvel, John 
Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, 
Lawrence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, 
Samuel Johnston, Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, 
George Crabbe, Walter Scott, Thomas Moore, William 

Godwin Here he was interrupted with, "and you mean to 

wind up this catalogue of single-name worthies with Charles 
Dickens?" The friend confessed that his thought had that 
way tended. " I suspected so. But you must not include 
my name." Here he paused, planted himself right before 
his companion, waved his hand in a mock-heroic manner, 
and in a deep-growling voice, like the aside of the " first 
villain " in a melo-drama, on a country stage, said, " Know 
then that I was christened Charles John Hougham, 



J. G. LOCKHART. 239 

which three names are to be found in the parish register." 
It was as he had said, — but long ere he became a writer, 
he disused two of them, and instead of Charles John 
HouGHAM Dickens, signed plain Charles Dickens, for 
all time. 

The observation of Charles Dickens was as great, some 
have thought, as even his imagination. It seemed as if he 
noticed everything that he saw — and remembered whatever 
he noticed. He noted down all curious names painted over 
shop-windows, and was ever adding, from old Directories, 
to his large collection of odd patronymics. 

Mr. Dickens was not a conversationalist, although he told 
a story well, and with humorous exaggeration. He hated 
argument, — indeed, he would not, or could not go into it. 
He used to observe, "No man but a fool was ever talked 
out of his own opinion and into your state of mind. Argu- 
ments are only cannon-balls, fired at a sand-bank, or water 
poured into a sieve — a sheer waste of time and trouble. I 
won't argue with a man : it is going down, on all-fours, to 
an obstinate dog. In emphatic cases the only argument is 
a punch of the head. That's a stunner !" 

In general Mr. Dickens was not happy in retort ; but on 
one occasion he decidedly turned the tables on Mr. Lock- 
hart, the Editor of the Quar^terly Review, in which publica- 
tion, a short time previous, a very hostile criticism on one 
of Dickens's works had appeared. It wound up with the flat- 
tering prophecy that the author of Nicholas Nicklehy " had 
gone up like a rocket, and would come down like its stick." 
On this particular occasion, Dickens and Lockhart chanced 
to meet at the Marquis of Northampton's, when some ultra- 
ofRcious friend insisted on introducing the Author to his 
Critic, and as he did so, had the bad taste to mention the 
offensive prophecy. Dickens, as he cordially grasped Lock- 
hart's hand, said : — " Well, Mr. Lockhart, I'll wait till that 
stick comes down, and when it does," he said with a sly 
twinkle in his eye, " I'll break it over, your shoulders.'^ 



240 LIFE OP CHARLES DICKENS. 

Lockhart laughed heartily, and they were tolerable friends 
ever after. 

Another time, when a bilious young poet was talking 
disparagingly of the human race, and was abusing his 
fellow-creatures, Dickens gravely said across the table, 
" I say, old boy, what a lucky thing you and I don't belong 
to them I That reminds me of something I read the other 
day : Two men were on a platform, going to be hanged. 
The rope had just been placed round their necks, when a 
bull burst into the crowd, and began tossing the unfortunate 
spectators right and left, whereupon one of the criminals 
said to the other, ' Bill, isn't it lucky you and I are safe up 
here V " 

Again, when the conversation had turned upon the recon- 
ciliation of two friends, who had long been estranged, 
Dickens said : "Yes, quarreling is very well, but the making 
up is dreadful. A man who had hanged himself, but who 
had been cut down and resuscitated, told me he did not 
suffer half so much in the hanging as he did in being 
brought back to life." 

One day, after dinner, some "mutual friend," after the 
death of Mr. Angus B. Reach, told Dickens that once upon 
a time, Thackeray had made a good hit on the clever young 
Scotchman's pertinacity, as regarded the pronunciation of 
his surname. It seemed that, at dessert, Thackeray had 
addressed him as "Mr. Reech," the obvious way of pro- 
nouncing the name. " No, sir," was the indignant reply, 
" my name is pronounced Ree-ack — in two syllables." With- 
out giving any verbal reply, Thackeray politely handed his 
neighbor a peach, saying, " Mr. Ree-ack, will you allow me 
to help you to a pee-ack ?" The story was neatly told, and 
the rewarding smile went round. '^Did j^ou say that ?" 
asked Dickens. "Certainly." "And think it original?'^ 
"Of course. Perhaps ^/oit said it ?" "No," replied Dick- 
ens, with a merry twinkle of the eye, "but I was at Lord 
ohn Russell's the- other day, and, having to wait for him a 



ANECDOTES. 241 

few minutes, took up a book, which hajDpened to be one of 
the volumes of Tom Moore's Diary. There I read, under 
date of 1826, 1 think, thajt Luttrell, the wit, dining next a gen- 
tleman whose father invented the small napkins or serviettes 
used, after dinner, to put finger-glasses or wine-glasses upon, 
addressed him as ' Mr. Doyley,^ and was informed, rather 
angrily, that the real name was Deh'-Oyley, with a long rest 
between the elided preposition ' D ' (or de) and the rest of 
the word. * Yery well,' said Luttrell, in his blandest manner, 
pointing to a neighboring dumpling on the table, ' May I 
trouble you, Mr. D' — Oyley, for a little of that D' — ump- 
ling.' So, added Dickens, turning triumphantly to Thack- 
eray, your joke is at least thirty years old. Where 
did you hear of Luttrell's ?" The wit protested that it was 
his own, and even questioned its existence in Moore. But 
the volume was referred to, and found to contain Luttrell's 
jeu cf esprit. Probably Thackeray had never heard of it, 
but the mere idea of plagiarism so much annoyed him that 
he did not utter ten words more during the remainder of 
that evening. 

When Bleak House was ended, and all the world was 
laughing at the manner in which the case of Jarndyce v, 
Jarndyce was literally kicked out of the Court of Chancery, 
(the costs having devoured the estate,) Mr. Dickens was 
called on a special jury, in the Court of Queen's Bench, 
but the particular case did not come off, the record having 
been withdrawn. Lord Campbell, then Chief Justice of 
England, was sitting at Nisi Prius, and said, '* The name of 
the illustrious Charles Dickens has been called on the jury, 
but he has not answered. If his great Chancery suit had 
been still going on, I certainl}^ would have excused him, but, 
as that is over, he might have done us the honor of attend- 
ino^ here, that he mioht have seen how we went on at com- 
mon law." 

Charles Lamb was very impulsive and knew it. He told 
my informant that he never dared to look out of a third 



242 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

story window, because he was afraid of being tempted to 
throw himself out. Once, at a funeral, he burst out into a 
hearty laugh — not because any ludicrous idea had been ex- 
cited, but out of pure hj'Sterics. Dickens was also very 
impulsive, and, when in high spirits, would do a series of 
odd things. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's " English Note- 
Book," under date, October, 1853, mention is made of his 
being told by a gentleman at a dinner party, " an instance 
of Charles Dickens' unwearibility," that during some (ama- 
teur) theatricals in Liverpool, " he acted in play and farce, 
spent the rest of the night making speeches, feasting, and 
drinking at table, and ended at seven o'clock in the morn- 
ing by jumping leap-frog over the backs of the whole Com- 
pany." His stock of animal spirits was large, and was to 
be drawn upon by society rather than by wassail. Few men, 
to quote an expression of Moore's respecting Sheridan, only 
reversing its personal application, had more rarely " passed 
the Rubicon of the cup. " 

Dickens's taste in literature was peculiar. Like Byron, 
he undervalued Shakespeare, saying "for a great poet he is 
too careless, and his finest pla3^s are full of absurdities." 
He forgot that he himself, like Shakespeare, was fond of in- 
troducing ultra-natural situations. Nevertheless he had no 
appreciation of the grave-digger's scene in Hamlet, and the 
smothering scene in Othello. He maintained they were be- 
neath the dignity of Tragedy, being entirely sensational and 
realistic, adding, " I should like to see Sheridan Knowles try 
such scenes upon the stage now ; they would damn any play 
however good." His favorite poet was Tennyson, although 
he thought Browning still greater. He once declared in a 
fit of enthusiasm that he would rather have written Brown- 
ing's " Blot on the Scutcheon," than any work of modern 
times. He once horrified Charles Knight, editor of Shakes- 
peare, by calling Hamlet "that prosy chap," and said that 
"no audience could stand his dreary soliloquies unless they 
had known them by heart ;" thus unconsciously sounding the 



PHILADELPHIA STREETS. 243 

great poet's praise. When Walter Savage Landor was 
praising Dickens's style and asking him where he got it, he 
said, " Why, from the New Testament to be sure." 

Wordsworth and Dickens did not take to each other. In- 
deed, there was a mutual contempt between them, though 
they met onl}- once. This was about the year 1843. Some 
days after the gentleman whose guest Wordsworth was, in 
the suburbs of London, asked the Poet, how he liked the 
great Novelist ? Wordsworth had a great contempt for 
young men, and, after pursing up his lips in a fashion pecu- 
liar to him, and swinging one leg over the other, the bare 
flesh of his ankles appearing over his socks, slowly an- 
swered : " Why, I am not much given to turn critic on 
people I meet ; but, as you ask me, I will candidly avow 
that I thought him a very talkative, vulgar young person — 
but I dare say he may be very clever. Mind, I don't want 
to say a word against him, for I have never read a line 
he has written." Some time after this, the same querist 
guardedly asked Dickens how he had liked the Poet Laure- 
ate ?— " Like him ? Not at all. He is a dreadful Old Ass." 
In short, the two authors did not assimilate at all. 

On his return from his first visit to America, Dickens 
used to make great fun of the rectangular Philadelphia 
streets, and said that the worst nightmare he ever had was 
caused by them, when he dreamed that he was locked up in 
Philadelphia, without being able to get out of it. First, he 
ran up one street, that was blocked ; then he turned round, 
and tried another, but that was blocked also. He continued 
these hopelessly unsuccessful attempts, until, at last, heart- 
weary and foot-sore, he sank down in such agony that he — 
awoke I 

Dickens's personal taste in dress was always "loud." 
He loved gay vests, glittering jewelry, showy satin stocks, 
and every thing rather prononce, yet no man had a keener 
or more unsparing critical e3^e for these vulgarities in 
others. He once gave to a friend a vest of a most gor- 



244 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

geous shawl-pattern. Soon after, at a party, he quizzed his 
friend unmercifully for his " stunning" vest, although he 
had on him at that very moment, its twin-brother, or sister 
—whichever sex vests belong to. This inability to turn the 
bull's eye upon himself, with the same searching fearless- 
ness he did on others, was a defect in his idiosyncrasy ; for, 
despite man's self-love and vanity, there exists in men a 
little self-consciousness. All of us are not blind to our 
own defects. 

Charles Dickens had a peculiar pity for fallen women, and 
was as tender towards them as his fellow-moralist, Dr. John- 
son, alwaj^s had been — which made a keen judge of human 
character saj^, that Johnson might be a bear, but all 
that was rough about him was his skin. Once, in private 
conversation, during a ramble in the streets, Dickens said 
that he was sure that God looked leniently upon all vice 
that proceeded from human tenderness and natural passion. 

Dickens's favorite county was Kent, and he loved to 
roam about its charming green nooks. One of the best of 
the Uncommercial Traveller's papers, in which the manners 
and customs of Tramps are described, is tinted with this 
Kentish coloring. Dickens was one of the few men I ever 
met who had an equal appreciation for the country and the 
town. He equally revelled in the dell and the squalid alley. 
Charles Lamb really had no relish for the beauties of 
Nature ; — he preferred Ludgate Hill to Snowdon. So did 
Samuel Johnson ; and Captain Charles Morris, the lyrist, 
was in earnest when he wrote the line, 

'* Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall." 

Wordsworth had a strong contempt for cities, but Charles 
Dickens loved both silent field and crowded street. A 
village inn was one of his beloved spots. The Tiger's 
Head, on the top of Highgate Hill, just opposite Mr. Gil- 
man's house, where Coleridge spent the closing nineteen 
years of his life, was a great favorite of his. So was 
Garraway's Coffee-house, in Change Alley, Cornhill, just 



SUDDEN DEATH. 245 

opposite the Royal Exchange, London, which was finally 
closed in April, 1866, after having been open for two hun- 
dred 3"ears ! To see the intense unction with which Dickens 
would empty a magnum of Brown Stout, was the next thing 
to drinking it oneself ! 

The great power of Dickens, before years came on, was 
in his eye. When he was in Rome, he sat in the halle de 
hote, opposite a somewhat vulgar woman, whose loudness 
of manners attracted his attention. Thenceforth, ever and 
anon he flashed upon her the "full blaze of his visual orb," 
which, as all who knew him must remember, was a very 
large one. At last, the lady cried out, in the unmistakable 
cockney vernacular ; " Drat that man there — I wish he'd 
take his heyes (e3'es) hoff my face. They're like a police- 
man's bull's eye !" — Such, also, was the searching glance he 
cast upon life. 

Dickens often expressed a longing for a sudden death, 
and he was not the man to assert an opinion for mere 
word's sake. A friend has told us that walking across 
Kensington Gardens one day with Dickens, a thunder storm 
suddenly came. As the rain began to descend, the great 
Novelist proposed shelter beneath the trees. " No," said 
his heroic but timid friend, *' that is too dangerous. Many 
people have been killed beneath trees from the effects of 
lightning." "Well," said Dickens, turning and looking 
earnestly at his friend, " of all the fears that harrass a man 
on God's earth, the fear of sudden death seems to me the 
most absurd; and why we pray against it in the Litany I 
cannot make out. A death by lightning most resembles 
the translation of Enoch." He then quoted the lines from 
BjTOu's Corsair, commencing : 

"Let him who crawls enamored of decay, 
Cling to his Couch, and sicken years away ; 
Heave his thick breath, and shake his palsied head ; 
Ours — the fresh turf, and not the feverish bed ; 
While, gasp by gasp, he falters forth his soul. 
Ours with one pang — one bound — escapes control." 



246 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Mr. John Dickens, the author's father, was a fine spec- 
imen of the semi-Sheridan class of gentlemen who dressed 
well, were very liberal with other folk's money, enjoyed a 
joke, repeated a hon mot in an airy manner, and believed, 
with Micawber, that giving a note at hand, or accepting a 
promissory note for the amount of debt, interest, and costs, 
was a payment in full. It has been more than suspected, 
by those who knew him, that Mr. Turveydrop, in Bleak 
House, was a gentle quiz upon this gentleman's obvious 
attention to deportment. He had lived in London, during 
the Regency, when 

" Hal was the rascalliest, sweetest young Prince," 

(Leigh Hunt's "Adonis of fift}^") considered the Prince 
of Wales as the veritable " glass of fashion and the mould 
of form," and dressed after the princely attire. He de- 
lighted in a tall collar, a stiff choker, a white vest, and 
patent leather boots. His hat, of the glossiest, was ever in 
newest fashion. He wore a belt, so tightly buckled, that it 
threw the blood into his face. The old gentleman was 
above the middle height, and stoutly built. Some who 
knew the late Captain James Leonard, of the New York 
police, and remembered Dickens senior, affirm that, though 
the latter was much the older, the general resemblance 
of figure, feature, and flush complexion was great. He 
was very courteous — imposingly so, like an English linen- 
draper selling his wares. His face was always clean-shaved 
and rudd3^ Latterly, it was a very handsome face for a 
man advanced in years. His wife declared that " none of 
the bo3^s were half as handsome as their father." Had he 
inherited a fortune, he would always have been regarded 
as a perfect, well-looking, well-mannered gentleman. Mr. 
John Dickens told an anecdote well, and remembered 
many. Here is one which has not found its way into any 
Sheridaniana ; 

When the Fox and Granville Administration was formed, 



SHERIDAN. 24T 

on the death of Mr. Pitt, early in 1806, the office of 
Treasurer of the Navy was given to Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan, who, in and out of office, was ahnost always 
in an impecunious state. John Dickens, one of the clerks 
in the Navy Department, then a handsome, smart young 
fellow, had attracted Sheridan's attention. One day, Mr. 
Dickens was summoned into the Treasurer's room. Sheri- 
dan civilly invited him to be seated, and producing two 
important-looking letters, with the large official red seal upon 
each, said, " Mr. Dickens, I am going to employ 3"0u in an im- 
portant mission, upon His Majesty's Service. Information 
has been received that certain French emissaries have been 
sent over to pay secret visits to our Dock yards, for the 
purpose of obtaining information for the enemy. You will 
immediately set out for Portsmouth, with these letters, 
and immediately on your arrival, respectively deliver them 
to the Port Admiral and the military officer commanding 
the station. On receipt of their answers, you will return 
to me without delay. A post-chaise and four horses will 
convey you through your journey, and the principal pay- 
clerk, (naming him,) will provide you with ample funds for 
defraying all expenses. I need not impress upon j^ou the 
propriety of being profoundly secret, even to the gentlemen 
of your office. I have the pleasure of wishing you a pleasant 
journey." As this new King's Messenger was leaving the 
room, naturally elate and important, Sheridan added, " By 
the way, Dickens, I have just remembered that Mrs. Sheri- 
dan is on a visit at Southampton, and has expressed a de- 
sire to return. After you leave Portsmouth, you may drive 
round to Southampton and pick her up. Here is her ad- 
dress. I am sure I can rely upon your taking every care 
of her." Instructions were followed to the letter. Tlie 
missives to Portsmouth, pooh-poohed by the authorities 
there, as " old Sherry's idle fancies" were officially answered, 
and 3^oung Dickens, who had travelled over ninety miles 
in a rattling post-chaise, hastened to Southampton, where 



248 LIFE OF CHAKLES DICKENS. 

he "picked up" the lad}^, and had tke honor of escorting 
her to London, pajdng all expenses out of the Government 
purse. The truth, as the reader has probably suspected 
ere this, was, that Sheridan, having no money and wishing 
for his wife's return, had invented the French spies, and 
had a Navy clerk dispatched merely to bring Mrs. Sheridan 
a long and expensive journey, at the public cost ! 

Mrs. Charles Dickens had lost four or five children. 
Her eldest son, Charles, now over thirty years of age, was 
married to Miss Fanny Evans, daughter of one of the firm 
of Bradbury & Evans, printers, and her father-in-law died 
a few days after her own father. Miss Kate Dickens is 
wife of Mr. Charles Collins, artist-author, brother of Mr. 
Wilkie Collins, the novelist. There is at least one other 
daughter unmarried, I believe, and several other sons — 
including Francis Jeffrey, Walter Savage Landor, Edward 
Bulwer L3^tton, and Alfred Tenn3^son Dickens. 

In June, 1858, it became town-talk, everywhere, that Mr. 
and Mrs. Charles Dickens had separated. The following 
letter, from the husband, also to be viewed as the wife's 
statement, appeared in the newspapers, addressed to Mr. 
Arthur Smith; 

London, W. E., Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, 

Twenty-eighth May, 1858. 
My dear Arthur: — You have not only my full permis- 
sion to show this, but I beg you to show it to any one who 
wishes to do me right, or to any one who may have been 
misled into doing me wrong. 

Faithfully yours, C. D. 

London, W. E., Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, 
Tuesday^ Twenty-fifth May, 1858. 
To Arthur Smith, Esq. : — Mrs. Dickens and I have 
lived unhappil}^ together for man}^ years. Hardly any one 
who has known us intimately can fail to have known that 
we are, in all respects of character and temperament, won- 
derfully unsuited to each other. I suppose that no two 



THE SEPARATION". 249 

people, not vicious in themselves, ever were joined together 
who had a greater difficulty in understanding one another, 
or who had less in common. An attached woman servant 
(more friend to both of us than a servant), who lived with 
us sixteen years, and is now married, and who was and still 
is in Mrs. Dickens's confidence and mine, who had the 
closest familiar experience of this unhappiness in London, 
in the country, in France, in Italy, wherever we have been, 
year after year, month after month, we'ek after week, day 
after day, will bear testimony to this. 

Nothing has, on many occasions, stood between us and 
a separation but Mrs. Dickens's sister, Georgina Hogarth. 
From the age of fifteen she has devoted herself to our house 
and our children. She has been their playmate, nurse, 
instructress, friend, protectress, adviser, companion. In 
the manly consideration towards Mrs. Dickens which I 
owe to my wife, I will only remark of her that the peculi- 
arity of her character has thrown all the children on some 
one else. I do not know — I cannot by any stretch of fancy 
imagine — what would have become of them but for this 
aunt, who has grown up with them, to whom they are de- 
voted, and who has sacrificed the best part of her youth 
and life to them. 

She has remonstrated, reasoned, suffered and toiled, and 
came again to prevent a separation between Mrs. Dickens 
and me. Mrs. Dickens has often expressed to her, her 
sense of her affectionate care and devotion in the house — 
never more strongly than within the last twelve months. 

For some years past Mrs. Dickens has been in the habit 
of representing to me that it would be better for her to 
go away and live apart ; that her always increasing estrange- 
ment was due to a mental disorder under which she some- 
times labors ; more, that she felt herself unfit for the life 
she had to lead, as my wife, and that she would be better 
far away. I have uniformly replied that she must bear our 
misfortune, and fight the fight out to the end ; that the 
children w^ere the first consideration ; and that I feared they 
must bind us together in " appearance." 

At length, within these three weeks, it was suggested to 
me by Forster that, even for their sakes, it would surely be 
better to Construct and rearrange their unhappy home. I 
empowered him to treat with Mrs. Dickens, as the friend of 
both of us for one and twenty years. Mrs. Dickens wished 
to add, on her part, Mark Lemon, and did so. On Saturday 



250 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

lust Lemon wrote to Forster that Mrs. Dickens " gratefully 
and thankfully accepted " the terms I proposed to her. Of 
the pecuniary part of them I will only say that I believe 
they are as generous as if Mrs. Dickens were a lady of dis- 
tinction, and I a man of fortune. The remaining parts of 
them are easily described — my eldest boy to live with Mrs. 
Dickens and to take care of her; my eldest girl to keep my 
house, both my girls and all my children, but the eldest son, 
to live with me in the continued companionship of their 
Aunt Georgina, for whom they have all the tenderest affec- 
tion that I have ever seen among young people, and who 
has a higher claim (as I have often declared, for many 
years), upon my affection, respect and gratitude than any- 
body in this world. 

I hope that no one who may become acquainted with 
what I write here, can possibly be so cruel and unjust as to 
put any misconstruction on our separation, so far. My 
elder children all understand it perfectly, and all accept it 
as inevitable. 

There is not a shadow of doubt or concealment among us. 
My eldest son and I are one as to it all. 

Two wicked persons, who should have spoken very differ- 
ently of me, in consideration of earnest respect and gratitude, 
have (as I am told, and, indeed, to my personal knowledge) 
coupled with this separation the name of a 3'^oung lady for 
whom I have a great attachment and regard. I will not 
repeat her name — I honor it too much. Upon my soul and 
honor, there is not on this earth a more virtuous and spot- 
less creature than that young lady. I know her to be inno- 
cent and pure, and as good as my own dear daughters. 

Further, I am quite sure that Mrs. Dickens, having re- 
ceived this assurance from me, must now believe it in the 
respect I know her to have for me, and in the perfect confi- 
dence I know her in her better moments to repose in my 
truthfulness. 

On this head, again, there is not a shadow of doubt or 
concealment between my children and me. All is open and 
plain among us, as though we were brothers and sisters. 
They are perfectly certain that I would not deceive them, 
and the confidence among us is without a fear. C. D. 

t 

The " trouble " here referred to had insinuated that Mr. 
Dickens had been only too much attached to Miss Hogarth, 



DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 251 

his wife's sister, — who, indeed, as an inmate of their house- 
hold, had given to the Dickens's children a tender care like 
that of a mother. He could not have written a stronger 
disclaimer, without doing the lady the great wrong of pub- 
lishing her name. The public fully accepted his frank and 
indignant denial. 

In No. 429 of Household Words, published on Saturday, 
June 12, 1858, was a notice, connected with these domestic 
relations, which was very impressive — by reason of its 
candor and simplicity. "He who excuses, accuses himself," 
says the wordly-wise French proverb, but the utter absence 
of excuse here, the mere statement of plain facts, as facts, 
had great weight with Dickens's multitudinous readers, — to 
be found wherever the Anglo-Saxon tongue, which he used 
so well, was known. This address to tlie readers of House- 
hold Words, has not hitherto been published in America, 
and runs thus ; 

PERSONAL. 

Three-and-twenty years have passed since T entered on 
my present relations with the public. They began when. I 
was so young, that I find them to have existed for nearly a 
quarter of a century. 

Through all that time I have tried to be as faithful to the 
public as they have been to me. It was my dutj^ never to 
trifle with them, or deceive them, or presume upon their 
favor, or do anything with it but work hard to justify it. I 
have always endeavored to discharge that duty. 

M3^ conspicuous position has often made me the subject 
of fabulous stories and unaccountable statements. Occa- 
sionally such things have chafed me, or even wounded me ; 
but I have alwaj^s accepted them as the shadows inseparable 
from the light of my notoriety and success. I have never 
obtruded any such personal uneasiness of mine, upon the 
generous aggregate of my audience. 

For the first time in my life, and I believe for the last, I 
now deviate from the principle I have so long observed, by 
presenting myself in my own journal in my own private 
character, and entreating all my brethren (as the}^ deem that 
they have reason to think well of me, and to know that I am 



252 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKEKS. 

a man who has ever been nnaffectedly true to our common 
calling), to lend their aid to the dissemination of my present 
words. 

Some domestic trouble of mine, of long-standing, on which 
I will make no further remark than that it claims to be re- 
spected, as being of a sacredl}' private nature, has lately 
been brought to an arrangement, which involves no anger or 
ill-will of any kind, and the whole origin, progress, and sur- 
rounding circumstances of which have been, throughout, 
within the knovdedge of m}' children. It is amicablj^ com- 
posed, and its details have now but to be forgotten by those 
concerned in it. 

By some means, arising out of wickedness, or out of folly, 
or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all three, this 
trouble has been made the occasion of misrepresentations, 
most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel — invol- 
ving, not onl}^ me, but innocent persons dear to my heart, 
and innocent persons of whom I have no knowledge, if, in- 
deed, they have any existence — and so widely spread, that 
I doubt if one reader in a thousand will peruse these lines, 
by whom some touch of the breath of these slanderers will 
not have passed, like an unwholesome air. 

Those who know me and my nature, need no assurance 
under my hand that such calumnies are as irreconcilable 
with me, as they are, in their frantic incoherence, with one 
another. But, there is a great multitude who know me 
through m}^ writings, and who do not know me otherwise; 
and I cannot bear that one of them should be left in doubt, 
or hazard of doubt, through m^^ poorly shrinking from taking 
the unusual means to which I now resort, of circulating the 
truth. 

I most solemnly declare, then — and this I do, both in my 
own name and in my wife's name — that all the lately whis- 
pered rumors touching the trouble at which I have glanced, 
are abominabl}- false. And that whosoever repeats one of 
them after this denial, will lie as wilfully and as foully 
as it is possible for any false witness to lie, before Heaven 
and earth. Charles Dickens. 

The separate maintenance which Mrs. Dickens received 
from her husband, secured to her for life, is stated at $3,000 
a year. The broken tie was never reunited, but Mrs. Dick- 
ens used to often meet her sister, and the children saw their 



SALE OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 253 

mother whenever she or they were so minded. The pub- 
lishers of Household Words are understood to have sided 
with Mrs. Dickens, and to have objected, as having some 
proprietary share in that periodical, to the insertion in 
it of Mr. Dickens's address to his readers. 

A considerable interval elapsed between the publication 
of Mr. Dickens's card in Household Words, and his secession 
from that journal. The difference between himself and 
publishers eventuated in a chancery suit, and the Master 
of the Rolls, this time avoiding delay, made a decree in re 
Bradbury & Evans v. Dickens and another, that the right 
to use the name of the periodical Household Words, together 
with the printed stock and stereot3^pe plates of the work 
should be sold by auction on May 16th, 1859. This was 
carried into eff"ect Hodgson's auction-room was crowded. 
The salesman mounted his rostrum, and set up the right 
" from and after the 28th day of May, instant, to publish 
under the said name or title, any periodical or other work, 
whether in continuation of the said periodical called House- 
hold Words, in the pleadings of this cause mentioned, or 
otherwise, as the purchaser shall think fit, be sold." 

The first bidding was £500, and rose up to £3,550, bid 
by Mr. Arthur Smith, (brother of Albert Smith, the author,) 
to whom the auctioneer declared it was sold, although, in 
fact, it was known and stated in the room he only acted for 
Mr. Charles Dickens, who was the real purchaser. Messrs. 
Bradbury & Evans, Mr. Arthur Smith, Messrs. Chapman 
k Hall, and one or two others were the only bidders. As Mr. 
Charles Dickens held three-fourths of the copj^right, and 
Messrs. Bradbury & Evans one-fourth, the purchaser had, 
therefore, to paj^ to the latter £887 ; but as the stereotype 
plates were valued at £750, and the stock at more than 
£200, it will be seen that the purchaser gained a clear profit 
on the transaction. Mr. Dickens purchased Household 
Words to discontinue it. 

Immediately after the sale, Messrs. Bradbury & Evans 

16 



254 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

published a statement of their difference with Mr. Dickens, 
the more material portions of which is here added ; partly 
because it bears upon the great author's literary history, 
and partly because his domestic trouble is mixed up in it : — 

Their connection with Household Words ceased against 
their will, under circumstances of which the following are 
material : 

So far back as 1836, Bradbury & Evans had business re- 
lations with Mr. Dickens, and, in 1844, an agreement was 
entered into, by which they acquired an interest in all the 
works he might write, or in any periodical he might orig- 
inate, during a term of seven j^ears. Under this agreement 
Bradbury & Evans became possessed of a joint, though 
unequal, interest with Mr. Dickens in Household Words 
commenced in 1850. Friendly relations had simultane- 
ously sprung up between them, and they were on terms of 
close intimacy in 1858, when circumstances led to Mr. 
Dickens's publication of a statement on the subject of his 
conjugal differences, in various newspapers, including 
Household Words of June 12th. 

The public disclosure of these differences took most per- 
sons by surprise, and was notoriously the subject of com- 
ments, by no means complimentary to Mr. Dickens himself, 
as regarded the taste of this proceeding. On the 17th of 
June, however, Bradbury & Evans learned, from a common 
friend, that Mr. Dickens had resolved to break off his con- 
nection with tliem, because this statement was not printed 
in the number of Punch x^ublished the day preceding — in 
other words, because it did not occur to Bradbur}^ & Evans 
to exceed their legitimate functions as proprietors and pub- 
lishers, and to require the insertion of statements on a 
domestic and painful subject, in the inappropriate columns 
of a comic miscellany. No previous request for the insertion 
of this statement had been made either to Bradbury & 
Evans, or to the editor of Punch, and the grievance of Mr. 
Dickens substantially amounted to this, that Bradbury & 
Evans did not take upon themselves, unsolicited, to gratify 
an eccentric wish by a preposterous action. 

Mr. Dickens, with ample time for reflection, persisted in 
the attitQde he had taken up, and in the following Novem- 
ber, summoned a meeting of the proprietors of Household 
Words. He did not himself attend this meeting; but a 



FURTHER TROUBLES. 255 

literary friend of Mr. Dickens came to it as his representa- 
tive, and announced there, officially, that Mr. Dickens, in 
consequence of the non-appearance, in Punch, of his state- 
ment, considered that Bradbury & Evans had shown such 
disrespect and want of good faith towards him, as to deter- 
mine him, in so far as he had the power, to disconnect him- 
self from them in business transactions ; and the friend 
above mentioned, on the part of Mr. Dickens, accordingly 
moved a resolution dissolving the partnership, and discon- 
tinuing the work on May 28. Bradbury & Evans replied 
that they did not and could not believe that this was the 
sole cause of Mr. Dickens's altered feeling towards them ; 
but they were assured that it was the sole cause, and that 
Mr. Dickens desired to bear testimony to their integrity'- 
and zeal as his publishers, but that his resolution was 
formed, and nothing would alter it. Bradbury & Evans 
repeatedl}^ pressed Mr. Dickens's friend upon this point, but 
with no other result. 

Thus, on this ground alone, Mr. Dickens puts an end to 
personal and business relations of long standing ; and by 
an unauthorized and premature public announcement of the 
cessation of Household Words, he forced Bradbury & Evans 
to an unwilling recourse to the Court of Chancery to 
restrain him from such proceedings, thereby injuring a valua- 
ble property in which others beside himself were interested. 
In fact, by this mode of proceeding he inflicted as much in- 
jury as his opportunities afforded. Not having succeeded 
in purchasing the share of his partners at his own price, he 
depreciated the value of this share by all the agencies at 
his command. By publicly announcing (so far as the Court 
of Chancery permitted) his intention to discontinue the 
publication of Household Words ; 'by advertising a second 
work of a similar class under his management, by producing 
it, and by making it as close an imitation as was legally 
safe of Household Words, while that publication was actually 
still issuing, and still conducted by him ; he took a course 
calculated to reduce the circulation and impair the prospects 
of a common property ; and if he inflicted this injury on 
his partners, it is no compensation to them that he simulta- 
neously sacrificed his own interest in the publication he is 
about to suppress. 

Household Words having been sold on the 16th inst., 
under a decree in Chancery, Bradbury & Evans have no fur- 
ther interest in its continuance, and are now free to make 



256 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

this personal statement, and to associate themselves in the 
establishment of Once a Week. 

Mr. Dickens began the publication of All the Year Round, 
simultaneously with the cessation of Household Words, thus 
getting ahead of his competitors, who, having to prepare 
for an illustrated work, did not publish the first number of 
Once a Week until July 2d, 1859. It had twelve engravings, 
after original designs, by Leech, Tenniel, Millais, C. Keene, 
T. R. Macquoid, H. P^ogers and T. Scott ; contained 
articles by Charles Reade, Shirley Brooks, G. W. Dasent, 
Tom Tajdor, G. H. Lewes, etc., and was edited by Mr. 
Samuel Lucas, literary critic of The Times, but did not suc- 
ceed, though a great deal of money was spent on it ; while 
Dickens's rival publication, without engravings, com- 
manded, from the first, a larger circulation than its prede- 
cessor had obtained. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

FONDNESS FOR THEATRICALS. — AMATEUR ACTING. — LORD LYT- 

TON'S play. — QUEEN VICTORIA. WILKIE COLLINS'S PLAYS. 

— CAPTAIN BOBADIL. — HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN AT 
gad's hill. — JERROLD MEMORIAL. — PUBLIC READINGS. — 
SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 

From childhood, Charles Dickens was fond of theatres and 
actors. In one of his prefaces he mentions that at the 
early age of eight or nine, he had acted, with his brothers 
and sisters, in little dramas which he had himself composed. 
Mr. J. T. Fields, (in the Atlantic Monthly,) says: "He was 
passionately fond of the theatre, loved the lights and music 
and flowers, and the happy faces of the audience ; lie was 
accustomed to say that his love of the theatre never failed, 
and, no matter how dull the play, he was always careful 



NOT SO BAD AS WE SEEM. 257 

while he sat in the box to make no sound which could hurt 
the feelings of the actors, or show any lack of attention." 
Actors, as well as artists, were among his best regarded 
friends. He was himself one of the best amateur performers 
in England. Before he was twenty -five years old he had 
two farces and an opera of his own played at St. James 
Theatre, London, then managed by John Braham, who, 
during full fifty years, was the great English tenor. Mr. 
Dickens first became known to the public as an amateur 
actor, by his performance, as member of a company resolved 
to establish a "Guild of Literature and Art," for the ad- 
vantage of authors, artists and actors. On May 27th, 1851, 
in Devonshire House, London, took place, with the eagerly 
willing sanction of the Duke, a performance of singular 
interest. Sir E. Bulwer Lytton had written for and pre- 
sented to the Guild a comedy entitled " Not so Bad as We 
Seem ; or, Many Sides to a Character." The scenery was 
painted by Clarkson Stanfield, David Roberts, Telbin, Pitt, 
John Absalon, Grieve, and L. Haghe — some of the leading 
artists of the time. Here is the cast of 

Not so Bad as we Seem. 

Dnke of Middlesex, - _ _ - Mr. Frank Stone. 

Earl of Lofiiis, _ - _ . _ Mr. Dudley Costello. 

Lord Wilmot, ------ Mr. Charles Dickens. 

Mr. Shadowby Softhead, - - - - Mr. Douglas Jerrold. 

Mr. Hardmau, ------ Mr. John Forster. 

Sir Geoffrey Thornside, - - - - Mr Mark Lemon. 

Mr. Goodenough Easy, - - - - Mr. F. W. Topham. 

Lord Le Trimmer, ----- Mr. Peter Cunningham. 

Sir Thomas Timid, ----- Mr. \Yestland Marston. 

Colonel Flint, ------ Mr. R. H Home. 

Mr. Jacob Tonson, ----- Mr. Charles Knight. 

Smart, ------- Mr. Wilkie Collins. 

Hedoe, -_---__ Mr. John Tenniel. 

Paddy O' Sullivan, Mr. Robert Bell. 

Mr. David Fallen, ----- Mr. Augustus Egg. 

Lucy, ------- Mrs. Henry Comptun. 

Barbara, ------- Miss Ellen Chaplin. 

The Silent Lady of Deadman's Lane, - - - - Mrs. Coe. 

Of these eighteen characters, only the three last were 



258 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

represented by professionals. Mrs. Henry Compton, pretty 
Miss Ellen Chaplin, and Mrs. Coe. Authors, artists, critics, 
editors, made up the rest. Mr. Dickens represented Lord 
Wilmot, described in the cast as "a young man at the head 
of the Mode more than a century ago, son to Lord Loftus,-' 
a thorough o-entleman, higjh-born and hio;h-bred. The time 
of the play, I should sa}^ was the reign of George I., and 
the scene was in London. It seemed to me, when I saw the 
performance, (afterwards, in the provinces,) that everybody 
played well ; though Mr. Dickens played best. Mr. John 
Forster, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mr. Augustus Egg, and Mr. 
Douglas Jerrold ranked next ; but then, Jerrold's father was 
a country manager, and he himself had tried to act, in the 
Strand Theatre, London, but failed in his own piece, '' The 
Painter of Ghent ;" a good play, too, if well acted. The 
character of Mr. David Fallen, who was what Washington 
Irving called " a poor devil author," was plaj-ed, with great 
truth, by Mr. Charles Knight, editor of " The Pictorial 
Shakespeare." There was a farce, also, entitled " Mr. Night- 
ingale's Diary," cast thus: 

Mr. Niofhtingale, - _ _ > _ Mr. Dudley Costello. 

!Mr. Gabblewig, Mr. Charles Dickens. 

Tip, _-->-__ Mr. Augustus Eo^g. 

Slap, - Mr. Mark Lemo^i. 

Lithers, ------- ]\Ir. Wilkie Collins. 

Rosina, -__--_- Miss Ellen Chaplin. 

Susan, ---- Mrs. Coe. 

In this thorough bit of fun, Mr. Dickens eclipsed the others, 
and the contrast between his broad farce in the afterpiece, 
and his good breeding, and tone, and^o?i inthecomedj'-, were 
remarkable. Nineteen years ago — only nineteen, and what 
changes ! of eighteen persons who performed in Bulwer 
Lytton's corned}^, there survive only Mr, John Forster, who 
is joint executor of Mr. Dickens, under his will ; Mr. West- 
land Marston, author of " The Patrician's Daughter" and 
other dramas ; Mr. R. H. Home, poet ; Mr. Charles Knight, 
historian and critic j Mr. Wilkie Collins, novelist j and Mr. 



THE GUILD PERFORMANCES. 259 

John Tenniel, principal artist of Punch : — two-thircls of that 
fine array of talent and generosity have passed away. 

Queen Victoria sent a Royal intimation, equal to a com- 
mand, that she wished this unique company of amateurs 
to go to Windsor Castle, and repeat the performances 
there, for the gratification of herself, family, and court, 
but received a polite intimation from Mr. Dickens, who 
acted as Manager, that he and his friends were private gen- 
tlemen, who could not perform in any house where they 
were not received on an equality with all the other guests. 
So, the Guild amateurs did not play in Windsor Castle. It 
was long before Queen Victoria forgave the frank independ- 
ence of this communication, — but, a few weeks before Mr. 
Dickens's death, she showed her appreciation of him by per- 
sonally inviting him to visit her at Windsor, and offering 
to confer upon him any distinction it might be in her power 
to bestow. lie wanted none, — he had won a higher title for 
himself than King or Kaiser could give. 

The performances of '' the Guild," in the principal British 
cities, were popular to a degree, and the prices of admission 
being high, jdelded a considerable addition to the Fund. 
In 1855, Mr. Dickens took a leading part in another per- 
formance, at Tavistock House, his own residence. Mr. 
Wilkie Collins had written a two-act play, entitled " The 
Lighthouse," in which Mr. Dickens, with his daughter and 
sister-in-law performed, to a select audience of friends. So 
much was said of it, that Mr. Dickens consented to appear in 
it, at Lampden House, Kensington, then inhabited b}^ a noted, 
afterwards even notorious, personage — Colonel Waugh, then 
supposed to be a millionaire, but subsequently a bankrupt, 
with " no effects,"- against enormous liabilities, in his sched- 
ule. The play, which had a scene in the Eddystone Light- 
house, was there performed for the benefit of a charity 
connected with the army in the Crimea. The splendid 
mansion was crowded with the most brilliant company that 



260 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

could be assembled in London, and the following was the 
cast of the comedy : 

Aaron Gurnock, head light-keeper, - - Charles Dickens. 

Martin Gurnock. his son, _ . _ _ Wilkie Collins. 

Jacob Dale, third lig-ht-keeper, - . _ Mark Lemon. 

Sam Finlay, a pilot, _ _ _ _ Augustus Egg, A. R. A. 

Relief of keepers, boatmen, etc. 
Shipwrecked Lady, ------- Miss Hogarth. 

Phoebe, --------- Miss Dickens. 

Of the performance, a notice written by Mr. Tom Taylor 
next day appeared in the London Times, saying, " The act- 
ing of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Lemon was most admirable, not 
only worthy of professional actors, bat of a kind not to be 
found save among the rarest talents. Aaron, a rough, rugged 
son of Cornwall, with the lines of misery deeply furrowed 
in his face, rendered more irritable than humble by remorse, 
and even inclined to bully his way through his own fears, is 
elaborated by Mr. Dickens with wonderful fulness of detail, 
so that there is not an accent, a growl, or a scowl without 
its distinctive signiticance. In a word, it was a great indi- 
vidual creation of a kind that has not been exhibited before. 
Jacob Dale, the blutf, honest, straightforward father of 
Phoebe, does not afford the same opportunity" — the Times 
goes on to say — " for refined variety, but his representation 
by Mr. Mark Lemon was a masterpiece of sturdy, thoroughly 
* made-up' reality." Much praise was also bestowed upon 
the ladies. But the association of Miss Hogarth with these 
performances is said to have given great umbrage to her 
sister, Mrs. Dickens, and to have been one of the causes of 
the melancholy rupture between herself and her husband, 
which occurred in 1858. 

Another of these performances, but earlier in time, was 
Ben. Jonson's "Every Man in His Humor," played at 
" Miss Kelly's Theatre," Soho street, with Mr. Charles 
Dickens as Captain Bohadil, Mr. Mark Lemon as Brain- 
worm, Mr. John Leech as Master Matthew, Mr. Frank Stone 
as Juslice Clement, Mr. Gilbert a'Beckett as William, 



DOUGLAS JERROLD. 261 

Mr. Douglas Jerrold as Master Stephen, Mr. Frederick 
Dickens as Edward Knowell, Mr. Alfred Dickens as Thomas 
Gash, and Mr. Dudley Costello as Downright. All of 
these are dead. Mr. John Forster, Mr. Horace Mayhew, 
Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, and Mr. Evans are the sole sur- 
vivors of that little troop. Mr. Dickens's Bohadil was 
declared to have been a remarkable performance. 

In 1857, another drama, by Mr. Wilkie Collins, entitled 
"The Frozen Deep," was privately played at Tavistock 
House, by Mr. Dickens and his friends. It was afterwards 
brought out, with the same cast, at the Gallery of Illustra- 
tion on Regent street. It may be remembered that the 
Preface to the Tale of Two Cities began with the sentence, 
"When I was acting, with my children and friends, in Mr. 
Wilkie Collins's drama of The Frozen Deep, I first con- 
ceived the main idea of this story," 

On the 8th of June, 1857, Mr. Douglas Jerrold breathed 
his last. Mr. Dickens, an old friend of his, was one of the 
pall-bearers at the funeral. It became known that Jerrold 
had not left his family well off, and Mr. Dickens got up 
what was called The Jerrold Memorial, in their behalf. He 
and his friends played " The Frozen Deep " in aid of this 
fund. Only a ver}^ few weeks before, he had changed his 
residence, from town to country, — having become owner of 
Gad's Hill House. His very first visitor was Hans Chris- 
tian Andersen — the Dane, whom he had not seen for ten 
years, and who arrived on June 9th,— the day after Jerrold's 
death. Almost the last w^ords of the d^dng man to his 
broken-hearted wife were " Dickens will take care of you 
when I am dead." He did. Mainly through his exertions, 
a large sum was raised, and so invested that the interest 
supplied her wants. Dickens read one of his Christmas 
Stories. "Time and labor," the good Dane writes, "were 
required to carry all this into effect. There were daj^s 
when I saw him write and forward twent}- letters ; all of 
which he did with an eagerness tind joy, as if it were child's 



262 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

plaj. The only thing that grieved me in this respect, was 
that it shortened and limited our intercourse ; for, owing to 
these affairs, he had to go repeatedly to London and stay 
there for whole days." 
He adds : 

The time drew nigh when I was to bid farewell to Dickens 
and Gad's Hill ; but previously 1 was to see and admire him 
as a great actor. The rehearsals of the dramatic perform- 
ance, the proceeds of which were destined for Douglas 
Jerrold's widow, called us for a week to London. Dickens 
was to read his Christmas Carol at St. Martin's Hall, and 
the Adelphi Theatre contributed its mite by performing 
Douglas Jerrold's best plays, " The Rent Day," and 
" Black-eyed Susan." The most brilliant performance, 
however, was the play in which Dickens appeared with some 
of his friends and several members of his family. A new 
romantic drama, *' The Frozen Deep," by Wilkie Collins, 
was to be performed. The author intended to play one of 
the leading parts, and Dickens the other. 

It had long been the Queen's desire to see Dickens play. 
Her Majestj^, therefore, resolved to witness one of the rep- 
resentations given several nights previous to the public 
performance, at the small theatre, " The Gallery of Illus- 
tration." The Queen, Prince Albert, the royal children, the 
Crown Prince of Prussia, and the King of Belgium, were 
present. Beside them only a few relatives of the amateur 
actors were admitted. From Dickens's house there were 
none but his wife, his mother-in-law and I. 

The Gallery of Illustration had been beautifully decorated 
with flowers and carpets, in honor of the Queen's presence, 
a special buffet with refreshments had been arranged for the 
royal guests ; and another for the rest of the spectators. 
Dickens played the role of " Richard " with wonderful im- 
pressiveness, and in a calm and natural manner, widely 
ditfereut from the manner in which the tragedians of Eni^- 
land and France generally play their parts. He would have 
been admired and applauded even though nobody had known 
that he was the great novelist. Beside Dickens, his two 
daughters, his eldest son, his two sisters-in-law, and his 
brother Alfred, appeared on the stage. Wilkie Collins 
played the role of " Frank Aldersby." 

The performance closed with the farce, " Two o'clock in 



SENDING THE HAT ROUND. 2G3 

the morning," which Charles Dickens and Mark Lemon, the 
editor of Punch, pla3^ed with the most rollicking and bril- 
liant humor. Dickens was excellent, both as a tragedian 
and low comedian, and is doubtless one of the most talented 
actors of our times. 

After the first performance was over, all those who had 
participated in it, assembled at Dickens's literary office, 
where a merry, merry time was had. The festival was 
afterwards renewed in the open air at the house of the 
amiable Albert Smith. 

Mr. Dickens and Mr. Arthur Smith, as Joint Secretaries of 
the Jerrold Committee, announced that "the audited accounts 
show that the various performances, readings, and lectures 
have realized, after the payment of all expenses, a clear 
profit of £2,000. This sura was expended in the purchase 
(through trustees) of a Government annuit}^ for Mrs. Jerrold 
and her unmarried daughter, with remainder to the sur- 
vivor." This statement drew from Mr. William Blanchard 
Jerrold, who had succeeded his father in the editorship of 
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, a comment, in which he stated 
that he felt it due to the memory of his father to state that 
if the public had gathered any idea that the family stood 
in need of any charity they were laboring under a 
mistake ; that his father had left behind him property to the 
amount of £3,000, besides an income of £100 arising from 
the copyright of his works ; and that if any further assist- 
ance be requisite it could be supplied by the family itself. 
Upon these grounds, Mr. Blanchard Jerrold declined " to 
permit the English public to remain impressed with the idea 
that there was need to pass the hat around — however grace- 
fully — in the name of Douglas Jerrold." Upon this, another 
London paper, The Critic, said : " But the hat has passed 
round, and it is not until it has been filled, and the proceeds 
safely invested, that Mr. Blanchard Jerrold issues his dis- 
claimer. Surely it is rather late in the daj^ to take this 
course, for it places both himself and the Remembrance 
Committee between the horns of a dilemma. If there weie 



264 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

'no need ' of the fund, why was it raised ? If there were 
* no need,' why did not Mr. Blanchard Jerrold say so 
before ? There are many uses to which that money could 
have been put other than throwing it where it was not 
wanted." 

Immediately after having thus done so well for his dead 
friend's family, Mr. Dickens entered into a new line, for 
himself, in which he made considerable profits, and while 
extending his own reputation, making his works even more 
generally known than before. He had been " in training," 
for some time, for his Readings. 

The first of those, I understand, had been given, some 
years before, at Chatham, where he had been a school- 
boy. Money was required for some good purpose, — 
educational, I think, — and a committee wrote to Mr. 
Dickens asking whether he would lecture for them — and 
on what terms. His reply was that he was very busy 
then, but would be disengaged before Christmas, that h*e 
would not lecture but read, and that he would not accept 
payment. In due time, he fulfilled this engagement, his 
reading — probably out of compliment to the season, being 
out of his Christmas Carol, and his success so unequivocal 
that it gave assurance to himself of triumph and emolument, 
if he were to take it up as a professional performance. 
After this, he read The Cay^ol and The Chimes, on several 
occasions, in aid of charitable purposes. A writer in the 
Bound Table fixed the scene of Mr. Dickens's first 
professional reading in the English Cathedral city of Peter- 
borough, which enjoyed, at that time, a Mechanic's Institu- 
tion, deeply in debt. When nearly sunk in an abj^sm of 
despair, the announcement was made that Mr. Charles 
Dickens had kindly consented to lecture for the institution. 
Mr, Dickens at that time had had no public appearance as a 
reader. He had occasionally been heard of as giving selec- 
tions from his works to small coteries of friends or in the 
private saloon of some distinguiahed patron of art. But he 



IN PETERBOROUGH. 265 

had nervously shrunk from any public debut, unwilling, so it 
seemed, to weaken his reputation as a writer by any possi- 
ble failure as a reader. He only stipulated that the prices 
of admission should be such that every mechanic, if he 
chose, might come to hear him, and named two shillings, a 
shilling, and sixpence as the limit of charge. Yain limita- 
tion ! — a fortnight before the reading, every place was taken, 
and half a guinea and a guinea were the current rates for 
front-seat tickets. Our R. T. reporter goes on to say : 

Dickens came down and himself superintended the ar- 
rangements, so anxious was he as to the result. At 
one end of the large Corn Exchange he had caused 
to be erected a tall pulpit of red baize, as much like a 
Punch and Judy show with the top taken off as anything. 
This was to be the reader's rostrum. It was the Christmas 
Carol that Mr. Dickens read ; the niglit was Christmas 
Eve. As the clock struck the appointed hour, a red, jovial 
face, unrelieved by the heavy moustache which the novelist 
has since assumed, a broad, high forehead, and a perfectly 
Micawber-like expanse of shirt-collar and front appeared 
above the red baize box, and a full, sonorous voice rang out 
the words ^' Marley-ivas-dead-to-hegin-ioith,^^ then paused, as 
if to take in the character of the audience. No need of 
further hesitation. The voice held all spell-bound. Its 
depths of quiet feeling when the ghost of past Christmases 
led the dreamer through the long forgotten scenes of his 
boyhood — its embodiment of burly good nature when old 
Fezziwig's calves were twinkling in the dance — its tearful 
suggestiveness when the spirit of Christmases to come 
pointed to the nettle-grown, neglected grave of the un- 
loved man — its exquisite pathos by the death-bed of Tiny 
Tim, dwell yet in memory like a long-known tune. That 
one night's reading in the quaint little city, so curiously 
brought about, so ludicrous almost in its surroundings, 
committed Mr. Dickens to the career of a public reader ; and 
he has since derived nearly as large an income from his 
readings as from the copyright of his novels. Only he sig- 
nally failed to carry out his wish of making his first bow 
here before an uneducated audience. The vote of thanks 
which closed the proceedings was moved by the senior mar- 



2G6 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

qnis of Scotland, and seconded by the heir of the wealthiest 
peer in England. 

Mr. Edmund Yates, the novelist, has recorded that it 
was not until the evening of Thursday, the 29th of April, 
1858, that Mr. Dickens appeared in St. Martin's Hall (now 
converted into the New Queen's Theatre) to give a reading 
for his own benefit. He prefaced this reading, with his 
reasons for appearing in public, saying : 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — It may perhaps be known to 
you that, for a few years past, I have been accustomed occa- 
sionally to read some of my shorter books, to various audi- 
ences, in aid of a variety of good objects, and at some charge 
to myself both in time and money. It having at length 
become impossible in any reason to comply with these 
always accumulating demands, I have had definitely to 
choose between now and then reading on my own account, 
as one of mj^ recognized occupations, or not reading at all. 
I have had little or no difficulty in deciding on the former 
course. 

The reasons that have led me to it, — besides the conside- 
ration that it necessitates no departure whatever from the 
chosen pursuits of my life, — are three-fold : firstly, I have 
satisfied myself that it can involve no possible compromise 
of the credit and independence of literature ; secondly, I 
have long held the opinion, and have long acted on the 
opinion, that in these times whatever brings a public man 
and his public face to face, on terms of mutual confidence 
and respect, is a good thing ; thirdly, I have had a pretty 
large experience of the interest my hearers are so generous 
as to take in these occasions, and of the delight the}^ give 
to me, as a tried means of strengthening those relations — I 
may almost say of personal friendship — which it is m}^ great 
privilege and pride, as it is my great responsibilit}^ to hold 
with a multitude of persons who will never hear m}^ voice 
nor see my face. Thus it is that I come, quite naturally, 
to be here among you at this time ; and thus it is that I 
proceed to read this little book, quite as composedly as I 
might proceed to write it, or to publish it in any other 
way. 



SEVERE STUDY. 267 

From that time, until last spring, when he retired, as if 
he feared it might be said 

" Rehtctant lags the veteran on the stage," 

Mr. Dickens was occupied several months during each 
year in giving his Readings, — visiting nearly every con- 
siderable city and town in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 
and even giving a course in Paris, which last was remark- 
ably successful. When not before the public, who ever 
evinced the strongest desire even to see him who had, as 
author, contributed so greatly to their amusement, instruc- 
tion, and gratification, he was much occupied in studying 
his readings. His consummate ability was not acquired 
or acquirable without great labor and perseverance. It 
took him three months, I have heard, to become perfect in 
each new scene, and I was assured, on equally good autho- 
rity, that his bodily exhaustion after a night's reading was 
very great. 

At last, many reports of his performances and successes 
having reached this country, and strong inducements, per- 
sonal and pecuniary, having been held out to him, to visit 
the United States, Mr. Dickens assented, and reached 
Boston, iu 1867. 



268 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER XX. 

SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. — RATIONALE OP HIS READTNGS. — 

RECEPTION AT BOSTON. — EFFECTS OF THOUGHT AND TIME. 

DRAMATIC POWER. — LONG WALKS. — LIST OF SELECTIONS. 

CORRESPONDENCE. — LAST READINGS IN BOSTON AND NEW 
YORK. — PRESS BANQUET AT DELMONICO'S. — LAST WORDS ON 
THE AMERICAN NOTES. — AMENDE. — DEPARTURE. 

On the 19th November, 1867, Mr. Dickens arrived in 
Boston, from England, the second time. In 1842, on his 
departure for Italy, he had been the recipient of a valedic- 
tory dinner from his friends, the Marquis of Normanby, 
himself a man of letters, in the chair. Sp, ere he went to 
the United States, in the winter of 186*7, another farewell 
banquet was given to him, in London, the chairman of 
which was Lord Lytton, of Kneb worth, — the only living 
writer who has closely approached, if he has not quite at- 
tained, the excellence of his friendly competitor, "Boz." 
There was, as usual, a great deal of speech-making. Mr. 
Dickens thus referred to his impending journey — and the 
great people whom, after a lapse of more than twenty-five 
years, he was about visiting : 

Since I was there before, a vast and entirely new genera- 
tion has arisen in the United States. Since I was there 
most of the best known of my books have been written and 
published. The new generation and the books have come 
together, and have kept together, until, at length, numbers 
of those who have so widely and constantly read me, natu- 
rally desiring a little variety in the relationship between us, 
have expressed a strong wish that I should read myself 
(Cheers). This wish, at first conveyed to me through public 
channels, has gradually become enforcedly an immense ac- 
cumulation of letters from individuals and associations of 



IN BOSTON. 269 

indivicluals, all expressing in the same hearty, homely, 
cordial, unaffected way, a kind of personal interest in me — 
1 had almost said a kind of personal affection for me (cheers), 
which I am sure you would agree with me it would be dull 
insensibility on my part not to prize. Little by little this 
pressure has become so great that although, as Charles 
Lamb says, my household gods strike a terribly deep root, 
I have torn them from their places, and this day week, at 
this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will readily conceive 
that I ani inspired by a national desire to see for myself the 
astonishing change and progress of a quarter of a century 
over thei^,, to grasp the hands of many faithful friends whom 
I left there, to see the faces of the multitude of new friends 
upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use 
my best endeavor to lay down a third cable of intercommu- 
nication and alliance between the Old World and the New. 
(Loud cheers). Twelve years ago, when, Heaven knows, I 
little thought I should ever be bound on the voyage which 
now lies before me, I wrote in that form of my writings 
which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these 
words of the American nation : " I know full well, whatever 
little motes my beaming ej^es may have descried in theirs, 
that they are a kind, large-hearted, generous, and great 
people." (Hear). In that faith I am going to see them 
again ; in that faith I shall, please God, return from them in 
the spring ; in that same faith to live and to die. 

He remained a fortnight in Boston before he made his 
public appearance in that city, receiving only his immediate 
friends, living in his hotel in the quietest manner, and taking 
his daily constitutional walk, alwaj^s extending to several 
miles, — frequently accompanied by Mr. Fields, the pub- 
lisher, whom he had kno-wn for some years and greatly 
liked. He lived at the Parker House, and visited few 
houses except those of Mr. Longfellow, Professor Lowell, 
and Mr. Fields. Mr. Clarence Cook, of the N. Y. Tribune^ 
who kept the public properly " posted " upon the great 
author's proceedings, thus reported : 

Mr. Dickens has kept himself strictly secluded from all 
but one or two old and intimate friends. His rooms are at 

17 



210 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the Parker House, and there he has remained busily en- 
gaged all day in writing and study, excepting when he is 
engaged in taking his daily eight mile constitutional walk 
with Mr. Fields, the publisher, and steadily declining all the 
invitations to breakfast, dinner, tea, supper, parties, balls and 
drives that hospitable Boston pours in upon him in an unfail- 
ing stream. Most of his time is spent in the most laborious, 
pains-taking study of the parts he is to read. Indeed, the 
public has but little idea of the cost — in downright hard 
work of mind, body and voice — at which these readings 
are produced. Although Mr. Dickens has read now nearly 
five hundred times, I am assured, on the best authority, 
that he never attempted a new part in public until he has 
spent at least two months over it in study as faithful and 
searching as Rachel or Cushman would give to a new char- 
acter. This study extends not merely to the analysis of 
the text, to the discrimination of character, to the minutest 
points of elocution ; but decides upon the facial expression, 
the tone of the voice, the gesture, the attitude, and even the 
material surroundings of the actor, for acting it is, not 
reading, in the ordinary sense, at all. Mr. Dickens is so 
essentially an artist, that he cannot neglect the slightest 
thing that may serve to heighten the effect of what he has un- 
dertaken to do. And he is so conscientious, so strict in his 
dealings — a very Martinet in business and thorough man of 
affairs — that he will leave nothing undone that time and 
labor can do, to give to the public that pays so much for 
the pleasure of hearing him the full worth of its money. This 
is the reason why he, a man of the world, greatly delighting 
in society, thoroughly fitted to enjoy it liimself, deliberately 
cuts himself off from it until his task shall be done. " I am 
come here," he says, " to read. The people expect me to do 
my best, and how can I do it if I am all the time on the go ? 
My time is not m}^ own, when I am prepariiig to read, any 
more than it is when I am writing a novel ; and I can as well 
do one as the other without concentrating all my power on 
it till it is done." 

On the second of December, I86Y, the first reading was 
given in Boston, in the Tremont Temple. Crowds assem- 
bled in the street to have a look at him. Mr. Cook con- 
tinues : 

Inside the house the scene was striking enough. Few 



HIS APPEARANCE. 2Y1 

cities an^^where could show an audience of such character. 
Ilardl}^ a notable man in Boston, or fifty miles about, but 
was there ; and we doubt if in London itself Mr. Dickens 
ever read before such an assemblage. There was Longfel- 
low, looking like the very spirit of Christtaas, with his 
ruddj^ cheeks and bright soft eyes, looking out from the 
crest of snow-white hair and snow-white beard. There was 
Holmes, looking crisp and fine, like a tight little grape-skin, 
full of wit instead of wine. There was Lowell, as if Sidney 
himself had come back, with his poet's heart smiling sadly 
through his poet's eyes. Here, too, was the elder Dana, 
now an old man of eighty, with long gray hair falling around 
a face bright with shrewd intelligence, as able now as thirty 
years ago to write "Paul Teuton; or, the Buccaneer.'' 
Bunning the eye over the hall, one saw other men widely 
known. Charles Eliot Norton, whose translation of Dante's 
"Viva Nuova " may well stand side by side with his master 
Longfellow of the grander song. There in the gallery is 
Edwin Whipple. Yonder is Fields, to whom all owe this 
great pleasure, for he suggested, urged and made this visit 
of Dickens easy to him. Bishop Eastburn, over on the 
other side, seems thankful that clergymen have yet some 
pleasures left. There is Poole, the librarian of the Athe- 
naeum, one of our men who knows most about books, and 
Samuel Elliot, the President of the Social Science, and 
George Greeny who recently crossed blades with Bancroft. 
Emerson's face I could not catch. Concord is far away, 
and snow storms no joke to travel in. Nor did Whittier 
come, as was promised — Whittier, who has never, in his life, 
been present at an evening entertainment of an^^ description, 
concert or opera, or even, strange to say, a lecture. He 
promised, but at the last his heart failed him, and the " good 
gray head that all men knew " did not bless our eyes to- 
night. 

The first thought of those who had seen Mm in 1842, and 
remembered him as a dashing, slender, handsome young 
man, with a smooth face and an abundance of long, dark 
chestnut hair, could scarcely realize that the Reader of 186Y, 
with grizzly moustache and beard, and evidently beginning 
to resemble "the bald first Caesar," was him who, in their 
and his youth, was oftenest called " Boz." The flush of 



2Y2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

youth had vanished. The " purpurea juventus " was of the 
past, for 

"O'er that fair broad brow were wrought 
The intersected lines of thought." 

Mental labor, rather than years, had changed him far more 
than the wearing and wearying touch of time. Still, in his 
attire, neat even to elegance, with the glittering watch- 
chain and pendant ornaments, and the flower in his button- 
hole (his daily companion there for thirty years), his intel- 
lio;ent srlance around and throuo-h the audience, as if it 
were rapidly taking stock of them, and his own apparent cool 
and decided manner, as if confident that in -a few minutes 
that eager crowd would be under his spell — all combined to 
render him not merely "the observed of all observers," but 
one of the most remarkable among the truly great men of 
this or of any age or country. 

" Cheer after cheer broke forth," it was added, " and amid 
cries of welcome and clapping of innumerable kids, Dickens 
rose and fell and rose again in a friendly roar, tried to 
speak and was defeated, and returned gallantly to the 
charge again, but had scarcely got as far as 'Ladies,' when 
he was obliged to succumb ; made another dash at ' Gen- 
tlemen,' and gave it up ; and at last saw that one English- 
man was nothing to so many Yankees, and waited smiling 
and bowing until they had their will and were ready to 
let him have his." 

The Readings of that evening consisted of the Christmas 
Carol and the breach- of-promise marriage trial from Fick- 
wicJc. The audience were alternately sobbing and laugh- 
ing during the former, though their tender sympathj^ was 
oftener moved than their sense of humor — but the trial, 
Bardell v. Pickwick, was farce from first to last — only 
varying in its grades of fun. It was in this, that, besides 
introducing the numerous and well-sustained changes of 
intonation necessary to individualize each of the characters, 



READING FROM PICKWICK. 273 

Mr. Dickens brought into play that wondrous facial mobility 
of feature and expression, which, in common with all great 
actors, he largely possessed, and effectively, because judi- 
ciously exercised. When Mr. Sergeant Buzfuz, assuming 
more importance than ever, rose and said, " Call Samuel 
Weller," there was, for a moment, a pause, 

*' A sound so fine that nothing lives 
'Twixt it and Silence," 

and then, as with one consent, a loud murmur of applause 
among the audience, which simultaneously broke into 
cheers. When he was supposed to have appeared — sup- 
posed ? Why the man was there ! attired in that identical 
livery, which made him wonder, when he first got into it, 
whether he was meant to be a footman, or a groom, or a game- 
keeper, or a seedsman, or "a compo of every one on 'em." 
It seemed as if Sam were there, in the fliesh. Then, the little 
Judge, — little Mr. Justice Stareleigh. At one moment, 
Sam Weller, in his free and easy manner, was delivering 
his evidence, half jestingly, j^et with a secret purpose, 
which he carried out, of doing his best for Mr. Pickwick, 
and in the next, he had vanished — and the audience only, 
saw the little Judge's rubicund and owlish face, only heard 
his unmistakable voice pumping up, from some unknown 
depths, the caution, " You must not tell us what the soldier 
said, unless the soldier is in court, and is examined in the 
usual way ; it is not evidence." Hey, presto, — the Judge 
disappeared, and we heard Sam, saw Sam cheerfull}^ answer- 
ing "Werry good, my Lord." Here let me observe that 
the illustrations of Dickens'^ by " Phiz " and other artists, 
placing so many of the characters before readers, in days 
gone by, until they had sank deep into their memory, 
greatly assisted Mr. Dickens, when he acted various scenes 
before an audience. In consequence of these engravings, 
Dickens has been more read and is better understood, than 
any other writer :— just as the particular plays of Shakes- 



2U LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

peare, which are most popular and most intelligible to the 
majority of readers, are those which are frequently acted 
on the stage. In dramatic representation and in good 
illustrations, there is a Realism which greatly assists intel- 
lect and memory. 

A critic, whose name I would mention if I knew it, said, 
of these readings, " A vast amount of hard study always 
preceded the reader's appearance in public. Every tone and 
gesture was carefully weighed. The text (an abridgment of 
the printed story or an extracted chapter) was arranged 
with the utmost pains, and frequently amended. It was 
partly on account of his habit of such constant toil, partly 
through failing health, that Mr. Dickens accepted very few 
of the hospitalities offered him in New York and Boston by 
his personal friends or the distinguished men who felt en- 
titled to seek his acquaintance." In New York, he put up 
at the Westminster Hotel, and outside of his own little 
party, (which almost always included Mr. Osgood, of Boston, 
and Mr. George Dolby, his agent, a very courteous gentle- 
man,) saw few strangers, except Mr. W. C. Bryant and Mr. 
J. Bigelow. In Washington, almost the only private houses 
he visited were those of Senator Sumner, Mr. Franklin Pbilp, 
the bookseller, and his partner, Mr. A. S. Solomon. He had 
come to America to get through what, no matter how pleas- 
ant its results to audiences, was actual hard labor to himself. 
His readings were so real, to his own mind, and so exhaus- 
tive to his system, physically and mentally, that he felt com- 
pelled to eschew all other excitements. Besides, his health 
was far from good, even then — though he continued his long 
daily walks, which, perhaps, did not tend to its improvement. 
■ ^- this early and long continued habit of taking a great 
deal of pedestrian exercise, some very striking scenes in his 
works are due. An English writer says, " That he was a 
great walker was borne witness to by much that he wrote. 
}To the wanderings of Little Nell and her grandfather Mr. 
Dickens's own experiences crop up. The Punch and Judy 



AT NEW YORK. 275 

men and tbe scene in the inn are manifestly photographs of 
people the author had met and of places where he had been. 
The same may be said of the account of David Copperfield's 
journey on foot from London to Kent, and the inimitable 
paper on * Tramps,' which we are never tired of reading, 
could have been written by no man who had not had oppor- 
tunities of closely studj'ing the begging fraternity, their 
habits and modes of expression. Indeed, scattered through 
his works are scenes and allusions that bespeak the practice 
of pedestrianism, if not of humbler modes of traveling. It 
is hard to believe that the description of the journey in that 
night wagon in ' The Old Curiosity Shop,' and the morning 
picture, the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly and discontented, 
with three months' growth of hair in one night, was not a 
realistic sketch that grew out of Mr. Dickens's own personal 
experience." 

His first Reading in New York was given at Steinway 
Hall, on December 9th, 186Y, and in Philadelphia, at Con- 
cert Hall, on January 13th, 1868. He read, also, in Wash- 
ington, Baltimore, St. Louis, and other places : — giving a 
second series, on his return north, at most of these places. 
His Readings in America consisted of the Christmas Carol; 
the Trial in Pickwick ; chapters from David Copperfield, in 
which the Peggotty household, the experiences with Dora, 
the Child-wife, the wreck at Yarmouth, and the Micawber 
family were exhibited ; Bob Sawyer's Party ; the story of 
Little Dombey ; scenes at Dotheboys Hall ; Boots at the 
Holly-Tree Inn, or rather, the adventures of Master Henry 
Walmers and his infantine sweetheart, Nora ; Dr. Marigold ; 
Nicholas Nickleby, Squeers, and Smike ; and Mrs. Gamp, 
who was companioned by the invisible, but immortal Mrs. 
Harris. After his return to England, he added the tragic 
scenes from Oliver Twist to his repertoire, and this reading 
is said to have been the most effective of all. Mr. Dickens 
was sensitive to criticism, which, however, was rarely ad- 
verse or ill-natured to him. There is a curious episode in 



276 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

his American campaign, which illustrates my belief that he 
cared a great deal for what the newspapers said. It was 
written, over the signature " Semi-Occasional," in the Jew- 
ish Messenger, is dated "Washington, D. C, June 27th, 
1870," and is known to have emanated from one of the few 
gentlemen in the Capital, with whom he was intimate 
during his brief visit there. It reads thus : 

Believing that whatever relates to that great and good 
man, the late Charles Dickens, has abiding interest to the 
English-speaking world, it is my duty, as also my pleasure, 
to chronicle some facts, known to a few only, of which I am 
personally cognizant. 

It will be remembered that, when Mr. Dickens last visited 
this country, he gave his first " readings" in Boston, then 
in New York, and afterward in Philadelphia and Washing- 
ton. While in Philadelphia there appeared in the Pre^.s* 
of that city some extremely caustic criticisms upon his 
readings, which, acting upon his very sensitive disposition 
and bodily ills — for the neuralgia in his foot was extremel}^ 
painful and irritating at times — made him nervous and 
somewhat downcast. 

Mr. Dickens returned to New York. The sale of tickets 
for his readings in Washington then began, and Mr. Dolby, 
his agent, reported to him from day to day, the most grati- 
fying success ; when, like a flash of lightning from a cloud- 
less sk}', Mr. Dolby was almost struck dumb b}^ the receipt 
of a dispatch from "The Chief," as he was in the habit of 
calling him, to the eflfect that he must stop the sale of tickets, 
and announce his inability to appear before the Washington 
public ; and that a specif messenger had left that morning 
conve}' ing his reasons in writing ! Various were the sur- 
mises of Mr. Dolby, and those whom he consulted in his 
perplexity; and it was finally determined to continue the 
sale of tickets, and await the arrival of the envoy extraor- 
dinary, bearing, as the sequel proved, his still more extra- 
ordinary dispatch. 

* It is no violation of editorial confidence to state here that this 
article was written neither by Colonel Forney, proprietor and prin- 
cipal editor of the Philadelphia Press, nor by R. Shelton Mackenzie, 
the associate editor. Nor did it express the sentiments of either. 



HIS SENSITIVENESS. 211 

Like bis own Micawber, tbe expected envoy "turned up" 
at tbe proper time, and relieved bimself of a formidable 
envelope, in whicb tbere were eigbt closely-written pages in 
blue ink, (be always used blue ink to write witb), giving 
bis reasons wby be could not perform bis engagement at 
Wasbington. 

It appeared tbat tbe nigbt before be bad been entertained 
at dinner by two or tbree well-known New York journalists, 
to whom be related, in a confiding, sympathetic spirit, bow 
unfairly, as be believed, be bad been dealt with by TJie 
Press of Pbiladelpbia — wbereupon be was given to under- 
stand tbat tbe probabilities were tbat tbe criticisms were 
not conceived in tbe usual spirit, but were the forerunner 
of a still more vigorous onslaught in Washington, where 
the same editor was also the proprietor of an influential 
paper ; and all this might result in personal insult. Mr. 
Dickens went on to say that, at bis time of life, he did not 
feel willing to subject himself to any such disagreeable con- 
tingency, be it ever so slight; and, therefore, be deemed it 
advisable to withdraw from the field, leaving Mr. Dolb}^ to 
tax his inventive faculties for a good and sufficient excuse 
to go forth to the public. 

Those who knew the Wasbington public and tbe kind- 
bearted editor alluded to, laughed heartily at the bug-a-boo 
conjured up, and assured Mr. Dolby tbat they would be re- 
sponsible that nothing of the kind occurred, tbe writer of 
these lines promising to see Colonel Forney, and explain to 
bim tbe whole story. Mr. Dolby communicated these 
assurances to Mr. Dickens, witb which be was fully satisfie(b 

Colonel Forney was in due time ''interviewed," and ex- 
pressed bis surprise and indignation at tbe motives attributed 
to bim. Colonel Forney stated ^bat it was too evident a 
mistake bad been made, and tbat Mr. Dickens would be 
criticised T>^hen he visited Wasbington fairly, and without 
prejudice: and, so far as be was concerned, be would con- 
tribute all in bis power to make bis visit pleasant to bim — 
whom be loved for bis large brain and still larger heart — 
as be was sure it would be to the public at large. 

It is quite unnecessary to add that, like another celebrated 
bero — though not of letters — Veni, Vidi, Vici, and so com- 
pletely did be "conquer" prejudice — wbicb existed only in 
some badly-diseased brain — that he could have read every 
nigbt for a month, to crowded audiences of tbe elite of tbe 
land. 



278 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Mr. Dickens spoke frequently of his appreciation of the 
reception he met with, and said he thought he had vever 
read to such symjDathetic audiences as welcomed him here. 
He thanked the writer for the humble part he had taken in 
inducing him to alter his determination, and was the more 
pleased because of the opportunity it had afforded him to 
observe the changes made during the past twenty 3^ears — 
a change from a " city of magnificent distances" to a city 
of elegant buildings and still more elegant ladies. 

Mr. Dickens gave two sets of lectures in Philadelphia, 
when Concert Hall was filled, to the extent of its utmost 
capacity, each night. If he had appeared in the Academy 
of Music, which, for such a purpose, with judicious packing, 
could have accommodated over four thousand persons, each 
able to see and hear him, it would have been filled each 
time. 

The Washington friendly anonj'me farther adds that 
Mr. Dickens was particularly impressed with the architec- 
tural grandeur and ornamentation of our Capitol, which he 
considered much finer than the English House of Parlia- 
ment. He had good opportunity for close observation, as, 
with his proverbial modesty, he preferred visiting it on a 
Sunday, when lionizing was impossible. It was a subject 
of remark that, while his companions were lounging through 
the statel}^ rooms with irreverentl}'' covered heads, Mr. 
Dickens removed his hat with the same deference he would 
have exhibited before the living rulers of the earth. He 
made many inquiries in relation to the late rebellion, and 
stated that his sympathies had always been with the North. 

Mr. Dickens was in Washington, on February 7th, 1868, 
being his fifty-sixth birth-day, "and English-like and social 
as he was, he had around him some choice spirits to com- 
memorate the joyous event." The writer of the above 
quoted statement presented him with a set of studs and 
sleeve-buttons of American manufacture, as a birth-day 
souvenir. Next morning, Mr. Dickens wrote to him, say- 
ing, " I was truly touched and aflfected j^esterday evening 



HIS SUBDUED ACTING. 2"9 

hy the receipt of jour earnest letter, and your handsome 
birth-day present. I shall always attach a special value, 
to both, and shall make a point of wearing the latter on the 
Tth of February, as often as the day may come round to 
me." His previous acknowledgment, to another Wash- 
ington friend is terse and genial. 

Baltimore, 

Tuesday, Twenty-eighth January, 1868. 

Dear Mr. Phtlp: — Praj^ accept my cordial thanks for 
the two charming bottles, (not to mention their contents), 
lor which I am indebted to your kind remembrance. They 
arrived here safely, several hours before your letter ; but 
we were not long in divining from whom they came, and 
whose health we must immediately drink — and did. 

I was on the point of writing to express to you my regret 
that I must forego the pleasure of dining with you while at 
Washington. That national compliment, my " true Ameri- 
can catarrh," is infallibly brought back by every railway 
car I enter. It is so oppressive, and would, but for occa- 
sional rest and silence, be so incompatible with my Read- 
ings, that my only safe course is to hold to the principle I 
established when I left Boston, and gloomily deny myself 
all social recreations. I am bound to disclaim the least 
merit in this virtuous-looking self-denial. I retire to the 
cloister as discontentedly and growlingly as possible. 
Believe me, faithful!}^, j^ours, 

Charles Dickens. 

Franklin Philp, Esquire. 

Mr. Dickens read with touching expression. However he 
may have begun, he had carefully and laboriously trained 
himself into reading to audiences, in a novel yet natural 
manner. His reading, in fact, was subdued acting: — rarely 
demonstrative, but always what is called " telling." He threw 
himself into each character, shifting from one to the other 
with dexterous and surprising rapidity. There were none 
of the miserable airs and graces of professional elocution, 
which would fain teach a different and distinct action for 
each word. He read as a highly cultivated gentleman might 



280 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

be expected to read, in a drawing-room, to ladies and gen- 
tlemen of equally high culture. Above all, he was not stagey. 
His one peculiarity, which was described in a clever bro- 
chure by Miss Kate Field, the title of which I cannot 
remember, was — that, in general, he closed each sentence 
with a rising inflection, — quick and sharp on the ear, like 
the rapid crack of a whip. This is the English habit of 
intonation, and he had not got rid of it. The readings had 
been most successful, in reputation as well as in worldly 
gain. Nor, great though the latter may have been, did any 
one begrudge it. His manner of reading was peculiar. He 
had the printed text always ready for instant reference, — 
in the event of his memory failing to supply the required 
word, — but it is to be supposed that constant repetition 
had engraved each sentence upon his mind. He took the 
greatest care to produce the desired eflects, but left no mark 
of the chisel upon the carving. Mrs. Browning has made 
Lady Geraldine's lover, the Poet, tell how 

Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth, 
For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking, 
And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate through which you drive 
them forth. 

There was some of this in Coleridge, whom I have heard 
read, or rather repeat his poem "Love" (beginning "All 
thoughts, all passions, all delights,") in a sing-song manner. 
At the end of his last reading in Boston, Mr. Dickens 
said : 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — My precious and general wel- 
come in America, which can never be obliterated from my 
memory, began here. My departure begins here, too ; for 
I assure you that I have never, until this moment, really 
felt that I am going away. In this brief life of ours, it is 
sad to do almost anything for the last time ; and I cannot 
conceal it from you, that although my face will so soon be 
turned towards my native land and to all that make it dear, 
it is a sad consideration with me that in a very few moments 



HIS FAREWELL. 281 

from this time this brilliant hall and all that it contains will 
fade from my view for evermore. But it is my consolation, 
that the spirit of the bright faces, the quick perception, the 
read}^ replies, the generous allowance, and the cheering 
crowds that have made this place joyful to me, will remain ; 
and you maj^ rely upon it that that spirit will abide with me 
as long as I have the sense and sentiment of life. I do not 
say this with any reference to the private friendships that 
have for years and years made Boston a memorable and be- 
loved spot to me ; for such private references have no busi- 
ness in this place. I say it purely in remembrance of and 
in homage to the great public heart before me. Ladies and 
gentlemen, I beg most earnestlj^ most gratefully, and most 
affectionately, to bid you each and all farewell. 

He took leave of his last American auditors at New York, 
on April 20th, 1868, in these words : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — The shadow of one word has 
impended over me all this evening, and the time has come at 
last when the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, 
but the weight of such things is not measured by their 
length ; and two much shorter words express the whole 
realm of our human existence. When I was reading 
" David Copperfield " here last Thursday night, I felt that 
there was more than usual significance for me in Mr. Pegot- 
ty's declaration : " My future life lies over the sea." And 
when I closed this book just now, I felt keenly that I was 
shortly to establish such an alibi as would have satisfied 
even the elder Mr. Weller himself The relations which 
have been set up between us in this place — relations sanc- 
tioned, on my side at least, by the most earnest devotion of 
myself to my task — sustained by yourselves, on your side 
at least, by the readiest sympathy and kindliest acknowledg- 
ment, must now be broken forever. But I entreat you to 
believe that, in passing from my sight, you will not pnss 
from my memory. I shall often, often recall you as I see 
you now, equally by my Winter fire, and the green English 
Summer weather. I shall never recall j^ou as a mere public 
audience, but rather as a host of personal friends, and ever 
with the greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell, and I 
pray God bless you, and God bless the land in which I have 
met you. 



282 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Three days before, on the evening of Saturday, April 
1 8th, a banquet was given to him at Delmonico's, in New 
York, by two hundred gentlemen connected with the news- 
paper press and periodical literature of America. There 
were not merely representatives, but representative men 
from New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Albany, Troy, 
Springfield, Hartford, Boston, Rochester, Washington, 
Chambersburg, Keokuk, Brooklyn, Camden, Toledo, Water- 
ton, Detroit, Utica, Honesdale, S3^racuse, New Jersey, 
Scotland and London. Mr. Horace Greeley presided, and, 
in reply, to his own health, the toast of the evening, Mr. 
Dickens said : 

Gentlemen : — I cannot do better than take my cue from 
your distinguished President, and refer, in my first remarks, 
to his remarks, in connection with the old natural associa- 
tions between 3'OU and me. When I received an invitation 
from a private association of working members of the Press 
of New York, to dine with them to-day, I accepted that 
compliment in grateful remembrance of a calling that was 
once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood 
which in spirit I have never quitted. (Applause). To the 
wholesome training of severe newspaper work when I was a 
very young man I constantly refer my first successes — (ap- 
plause) — and, my sons will hereafter testify of their father 
that he was always steadily proud of that ladder by which 
he rose. (Renewed applause). Ifit were otherwise I should 
have but a very poor opinion of their father, which perhaps — 
upon the whole — I-have-not. (Laughter). Thus, gentlemen, 
under any circumstances, this company would have been 
exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me ; but whereas 
I supposed that, like the fairies' pavilion of the " Arabian 
Nights," it would be but a mere handful, and I find it drawn 
out like the same elastic pavilion, capable of comprehend- 
ing a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the honor 
of being your guest. For, you will readily believe that the 
more widely representative of the press in America my en- 
tertainers are, the more I must feel the good will and kindly 
sentiments towards me of that last institution. (Applause). 
Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in 
the land, and I have for upwards of four hard winter months 



AT THE PRESS BANQUET. 283 

so contended against what I have been sometimes quite ad- 
miringly assured was a genuine American catarrh-(laughter) 
— a possession wliich I have throughout highly appreciated, 
though I might have preferred to be naturalized b}^ any other 
outward or visible means — (laughter) — I say, gentlemen, so 
much of my voice has lately been heard in the land that I 
might have been contented not to trouble you any further 
from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with 
which I henceforth charge myself, not only here but on every 
suitable occasion whatsoever and wheresoever, to express 
my high and grateful sense of my second reception in 
America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national 
generosit}^ and magnanimity. (Cheering). Also, to declare 
how astounded I have been by the amazing changes that I 
have seen around me on every side. Changes moral, changes 
physical ; changes in the amount of land subdued and cul- 
tivated ; changes in the rise of vast new cities ; changes in 
the growth of older cities almost out of recognition ; changes 
in the growth of the graces and amenities of life ; changes 
in the press — without whose advancement no advancement 
can take place anywhere. (Applause). Nor am I, believe 
me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five-and-twenty years 
there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing 
to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was 
here first. (Applause). And, gentlemen, this brings me to 
a point on which I have, ever since I landed here last No- 
vember, observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted 
to break it ; and, in reference to it, 1 will, with your good 
leave, take you into my confidence now. Even the press, 
being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed — 
(laughter)— and I rather think that I have, in one or two 
rare instances, known its information to be not perfectly 
correct — (laughter) — with reference to myself (Renewed 
laughter). Indeed, I have now and again been more sur- 
prised by printed news that I have read of myself than by 
an}^ printed news that I have ever read in my present state 
of existence. (Applause). Thus the vigor and perseve- 
rance with which I have for some months been "collecting 
materials for and hammering away at a new book on America" 
— (laughter) — seeing that all that time it has been perfectly 
well known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, 
that I positively declared that no consideration on earth 
should induce me to write one. (Laughter). But what I have 
intended, what I have resolved upon, and this is the confi- 



284 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

dence I seek to place in jou, is that on my return to En<T- 
land, in my own English journal, manfull}^, promptly, plainly 
in my own person to bear for the behalf of my countrj^men, 
such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I 
have hinted at to-night. (Applause). Also to record that 
wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with 
the largest^ I have been received with unsurpassable polite- 
ness, delicac}'', sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and 
with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced 
upon me by the nature of my avocation here and the state 
of my health. (Applause). This testimon}'-, so long as I 
live, and so long as m}^ descendants have any legal right in 
my books, I shall cause to be republished as an appendix to 
every copy of those two books of mine in which I have referred 
to America. (Applause). And this I will do, and cause to 
be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I 
regard it as an act of plain justice and honor. (Applause). 
Gentlemen, this transition from my own feelings towards, 
and interest in America, to those of the mass of my coun- 
trymen, seems to me but a natural one, whether or not it is 
so, I make it an express object. I was asked in this very 
city, about last Christmas time, whether an American was 
not at some disadvantage in England as a foreigner ? The 
notion of an American being regarded as a foreigner at all — 
of his ever being thought of or spoken of in that character, 
was so uncommonly incongruous and absurd to me that my 
gravity was for a moment quite overpowered. (Applause). 
As soon as it was restored, I said that for years and years 
past I had hoped I had had as many American friends and 
received as many American visitors as almost any Englishman 
living (applause), and that my unvaried experience fortified by 
others was that it was enough in England to be an American 
to be received with the most earnest respect and recognition 
anywhere. Thereupon, out of half a dozen people, suddenly 
spoke out but two. One, an American gentleman of cultivated 
taste for art, who, finding himself on a certain Sunday, out- 
side the wall of a certain historical English castle, famous 
for its pictures, was refused admission there according to 
the strict rules of the place on that day, but by merely rep- 
resenting that he was an American gentleman on his travels, 
had not only the picture-gallery but the whole castle placed 
at his immediate disposal. (Applause and laughter). There 
was a lady too, being in London, and having a great desire 
to see the famous reading-room of the British Museum, was 



AMENDE HONORABLE. 285 

assured by the English family with which she staid that it 
was unfortunately impossible, because the place was closed 
for a week, and she had only three daj^s there. Upon that 
lady's going, as she assured me, alone to the gate — self-in- 
troduced as an American lady — the gate flew open as if b}" 
magic. (Laughter and applause). I am unwillingly bound 
to add that she certainly was young and extrerael}^ pretty. 
(Laughter and applause). Still the porter of that institu- 
tion is of an obese habit, and to the best of my observation 
not very impressible. (Laughter). Now, gentlemen, I 
refer to these trifles as collateral assurance to you that the 
Englishman who shall humbly strive, as I hope to do, to be 
in England as faithful to America as to England herself, has 
no previous conception to contend against. (Applause). 
Points of difference there have been ; points of difference 
there are ; points of difference there probably alwa3's will 
be between the two great peoples ; but broadcast in England 
is sown the sentiment that these two peoples are essentially 
one — (applause) — and that it rests with them to uphold the 
great Anglo-Saxon race to which our President has referred, 
and all its great achievements throughout the world. If I 
know anything of my countrymen, and they give me the credit 
of knowing something of them (voice : "good.") if I know 
anj'-thing of m}^ countr3''men, gentlemen, the English heart 
is stirred by the fluttering of these Stars and Stripes, as it 
is stirred by no other flag that floats, except its own. (Great 
applause). If I know my countrymen, in au}^ and every 
relation towards America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony 
Absolute recommended lovers to begin, with a little aversion, 
but with a great liking and a profound respect, and what- 
ever may be the sensitiveness of the moment, or the 
little official passion, or the little oiflcial policy, now or 
then, or here or there, may be, take my word for it, that the 
first enduring great popular consideration in England is, a 
generous construction of justice. Finally, gentlemgin, I say 
this, subject to j^our correction, I do believe that from the 
great majority of honest minds on both sides, there cannot 
be absent the conviction that it would be better for this 
globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, or over- 
run by an iceberg, and abandoned to the ar^ic fox and bear, 
than that it should present the spectacle of these two great 
nations, each of which has in its own way and hour, striven 
so hard and so successfully for freedom, ever again being 

18 



286 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

arra^^ed the one against the other. (Great applause). Gen- 
tlemen, I cannot thank your President enough, and you 
enough, for your kind response to in 3^ health, and my poor 
remarks. But believe me, I do thank you with the utmost 
fervor of which my soul is capable. (Loud applause). 

Speeches were also made by Messrs. Henry J. Eaj^mond, 
George W. Curtis, W. H. Hurlburt, C. E. Norton, J. R. Haw- 
ley, John Russel Young, G. W. Demers, M. Halsted, E. de 
Leon, T. B. Thorpe, and E. L. l^Bom-ens. It happened that 
Mr. Dickens, in very bad health on this occasion, had to 
retire before all the twelve regular toasts had been given 
and replied to. He heard Mr. G. W. Curtis, however, and 
declared, after his return to England, that his speech was the 
best he bad ever heard. That part of Mr. Dickens's own 
address, in which he may be said to have retracted extreme 
opinions formed in his first visit to this country, and hastily 
expressed by him, was received with equal satisfaction by 
those who read and those who heard it. 

On the 22d of April, Mr. Dickens returned to England 
in the mail steamer, to which he was escorted by " troops 
of friends." In May, he again set foot on his native soil. 



CHAPTER XXL 

RETURN TO ENGLAND. — IN HARNESS. — A NEW READINO. — DIN- 
NER AT LIVERPOOL. — DANGEROUS ILLNESS. — GRAVE-SIDE 
SPEECH-MAKING. — GAD'S HILL HOUSE. — MISS CLARKE AT 
TAVISTOCK HOUSE. — HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. — FRANKLIN 
PHILP.' — HABITS OF W^ORK. — LONG WALKS. M. FECHTER. 

CLOSE OP 1869. 

The return of Mr. Dickens to Eugland, in May, 1868, 
was welcomed by his countrymen. His neighbors, ciiiefly 
small farmers and laborers in the vicinity of Gad's Hill, 



LAST READINGS. 287 

made a demonstration which, for England, where the prac- 
tice is to repress the expression of emotion, was considered 
rather remarkable. They raised a floral arch, iindernealh 
which he entered into his own little territory. It was 
rumored that he had realized £80,000 b^'' his readings 
in America, — which, most probably, was an exaggeration, 
as guess-work estimates generally are. That he had done 
well was undeniable. For some months after his return, 
he did little more than give increased personal superintend- 
ence to All The Year Bound. The declining health of Mr. 
AVills, the sub-editor of that weekly, rendered this very 
necessary. He had been training his eldest son to take a 
leading part in the management of the publication, and now 
duly installed him as Mr. Wills's successor. Nor did the 
young man fall short of the paternal estimate of his ability 
and steadiness. At the same time, Mr. Dickens reserved 
to himself, for the most part, what may be designated the 
critical dealing with authors, their proposed subjects, their 
manuscripts. He saw them personally, or corresponded 
with them. Generally, he had to write from twelve to 
twenty missives a day, on subjects connected with his 
weekly. For the most part these were all from his own pen. 
Sometimes, when the pressure upon his time was consider- 
able, he would pencil down the heads of his letter, another 
hand would reduce these into epistolatory shape, which 
after he had read and approved of, he would complete by 
his signature, — that peculiar well-known specimen of eccen- 
tric calligraph}^ He wrote some short papers, (they are 
collected in the present volume) in which his old manner 
was well preserved. He had almost resolved to give no more 
readings in England, but, yielding to strong and general 
solicitations, — more particularly made by members of the 
theatrical profession, whose opportunities of hearing him 
had necessarily been few, — announced a farewell course. 
The skilled elocution and dramatic talent with which he 
illustrated the creations of his fancy, bestowing fresh anima- 



288 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

tion on the characters, and bringing out more vividly both 
the pathos and the fun, had rendered the readings extremely 
popular ; and additional interest was imparted to them by 
the personal tie established between the reader and his 
audiences. The new series was announced to take place in 
St. James's Hall, London, and Mr. Dickens's agents inti- 
mated that "any announcement made in connection with 
these Farewell Readings will be strictly adhered to and 
considered final ; and that on no consideration whatever 
will Mr. Dickens be induced to appoint an extra night in 
any place in which he shall have been once announced to 
read for the last time." 

On October 20th, 1868, in London, he read a selection of 
scenes from " David Copperfield," and finished with a glimpse 
of Mrs. Gamp. The readings from that autobiographical 
story comprised the introduction of Steerforth to the Peg- 
gotty household, on the night of little Emily's betrothal to 
Ham ; the dinner party at David's chambers in London, at 
which symposium Mr. and Mrs. Micawber appear to such 
characteristic advantage ; the loves of David and Dora, with 
a glimpse at the queer domestic economy of their wedded 
life ; and the storm at Yarmouth, ending with the stirring 
description of the wreck and death of Ham Feggotty and 
the man who had wronged him. This final episode and 
culmination of the tale was preceded by a short narrative 
of the meeting between David Copperfield and Emily's 
uncle, when the latter tells the story of his wanderings 
through France in sorrowful quest of the poor girl. The de- 
light of his audience was manifest in all parts of the hall, 
silence being more strongly indicative of appreciation than 
applause. 

The pressure of friends, and of friendly critics, who 
thought, to use a familiar term, that he never "had let 
himself out " in his personations — never given full play to 
his dramatic genius — prevailed, at last. Mr. Edmund 
Yates says : " That wish has now been realized. When Mr. 



READS FROM OLIVER TWIST. 289 

Dickens called round him some half-hundred of his friends 
and acquaintances, on whose discrimination and knowledge 
of public audiences he had reliance, and when, after request- 
ing their frank verdict on the experiment, he commenced 
the new reading, * Sikes and Nancy,' until, gradually warm- 
ing with excitement, he flung aside his book and acted the 
scene of the murder, shrieked the terrified [leadings of the 
girl, growled the brutal savagery of the murderer, brought 
looks, tones, gestures simultaneously into play to illustrate 
his meaning, there was no one, not even of those who had 
known him best or who believed in him most, but was 
astonished at the power and the versatility of his genius.'^ 
The individuality of each character was rendered with 
almost astonishing power. The conclusion was a climax 
of surpassing force. We are told, "throughout the entire 
scene of the murder, from the entrance of Sikes into the 
house until the catastrophe, the silence was intense; the 
old phrase 'a pin might have been heard to drop,' might have 
been legitimately emploj^ed. It was a great study to watch 
the faces of the people, — eager, excited, intent, — permitted 
for once in a life-time to be natural, forgetting to be British, 
and C3'nical and unimpassioned. The great strength of this 
feeling did not last into the concluding five minutes. The 
people were earnest and attentive ; but the wild excitement 
so seldom seen amongst us died as Nancy died, and the rest 
was somewhat of an anti-climax." This was the only one 
of Mr. Dickens's Readings which was not given in America. 
In fact, he had not studied it out until after his return home. 
The farewell readings were given in "the provinces," 
during the winter of 1868 and the spring of 1869. Their 
popularity was, if possible, greater than before — the crown- 
ing success in America had re-acted in England. In Liver- 
pool, where he was always a great favorite, advantage was 
taken of his presence to give him a grand dinner, in St. 
George's Hall. Mr. Dickens had been invited to stop with 
his friend, Dr. Sheridan, the eminent chemist, during his 



290 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

visit to Liverpool, but conld not be induced to violate his 
invariable rule to forego social visiting during his profes- 
sional labors. 

The last public compliment conferred upon Mr. Dickens 
was on the 10th of April, 18^9, when a banquet was given 
to him, bj the merchants of Liverpool, in their maguificent 
St. George's Hall. The chair was occupied by Mr. Dover, 
Mayor of Liverpool. Among the guests were Lords Duff- 
erin and Houghton, W. Hepworth Dixon, Mark Lemon, 
Anthony Trollope, G. A. Sala, and M. Alphonse Esquiros, 
a liberal French author, formerly a member of the Corps 
Legislatif, but exiled by the coup d^ etat of December 2d, 
1850. The speech of the evening was to this effect: 

Mr. Mayor, Ladies, and Gentlemen, although I have 
become so well accustomed of late to the sound of my own 
voice in this neighborhood as to hear it with perfect com- 
posure (laughter), the case is, believe me, very, very dif- 
ferent in respect of those overwhelming voices of yours. 
As Professor Wilson once confided to me in Edinburgh, 
that I had not the least idea from hearing him in public 
what a magnificent speaker he found himself to be when he 
was quite alone (laughter), so you can form no conception, 
from the specimen before you, of the eloquence with which 
I shall thank you, again and again, in some of the inner- 
most moments of my future life (loud cheers). Often and 
often, then, God willing, my memory will recall this biil- 
liant scene, and will repeople and reilluminate 

This banquet-hall deserted — 

Its lights all fled, its garlands dead, 

And all but I departed ; 

and faithful to this place in its present aspect will preserve 
and mark it exactly as it stands — not one man's seat empty, 
not one woman's fair face absent, while life and memory 
abide in me (cheers). Mr. Mayor, Lord DuiTerin in his 
speech, so affecting to me, so eloquentl}^ uttered, and so 
rapturously received, made a graceful and gracious allusion 
to the immediate occasion of m}^ present visit to your noble 
city. It is no homage to Liverpool, based upon a moment's 
untrustworthy enthusiasm, but it is a solid fact, built upon 



BANQUET AT LIVERPOOL. 291 

the rock of experience, that when I first made up my mind, 
after considerable deliberation, systematically to meet my 
readers in large numbers, face to face, and try to express 
myself to them through the brea|th of life, Liverpool stood 
foremost amongst the great places out of London to which 
I looked with eager confidence and pleasure (cheers). And 
why was this ? Not merely because of the reputation of its 
citizens for a generous estimation of the arts ; not merely 
because I had unworthily filled the chair of its great self- 
educational institution long ago (hear, hear) ; not merely 
because the place had been a home to me since the well- 
remembered winter da}'" when its blessed roofs and steeples 
dipped into the Mersey behind me on the occasion of my 
first sailing away to see m}^ generous friends across the 
Atlantic (hear, and applause), seven-and-twenty 3'ears ago ; 
not for any of these considerations, but because it had been 
my hap}>iness to have an opportunit}^ of testing the spirit of 
its people. I had asked Liverpool for its help towards the 
worthy preservation of Shakespeare's house (applause); on 
another occasion, I had ventured to address Liverpool in 
the names of Leigh Hunt, and Sheridan Knowles (applause) ; 
on still another occasion I had addressed it in the cause of 
the brotherhood and sisterhood of letters and the kindred 
arts; and on each and all the response had been unsur- 
passable, instantaneous, open-handed and munificent. Mr. 
Mayor, ladies, and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a 
small illustration of my present position from my own pe- 
culiar craft, I would say that there is this objection in 
writing fiction to giving a story an autobiographical form, 
that, through whatever dangers the narrator may pass, it 
is clear, unfortunately, to the reader, beforehand, that he 
must have gone through them somehow (laughter), else 
he could not have lived to tell the tale (renewed laughter 
and applause). Now, in speaking fact, when the fact is as- 
sociated with such honors as these with which 3^ou have 
enrichtd me, there is this singular difiiculty in the way 
of returning thanks, that the speaker must infallibly come 
back to himself through whatsoever oratorical disasters 
he may languish on the road (laughter). Let me, there- 
fore — let me, then, take the plainer and simple, middle 
course of dividing my subject equall}^ between myself and 
you (applause). Let me assure you that whatever you 
have accepted with pleasure, either by word of pen or by 
word of mouth, from me, you have greatly improved in 



292 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the acceptance (laughter, and hear, hear). As the gold is 
said to be doubly and trebly refined which has seven times 
passed through the furnace, so the fancy may be said to be- 
come more and more refined each time it passes through 
the human heart (loud applause). You have, and you know 
you have, brought to the consideration of me that quality in 
yourselves without which I should have but beaten the air. 
Your earnestness has stimulated mine, your laughter has 
made me laugh, and 3'Our tears have overflowed my eyes 
(loud applause). All that 1 can claim for myself in estab- 
lishing the relations which exist between us is constant fidelity 
to hard work. My literary brethren about me, of whom 
I am so proud to see so many (applause), know very well 
how true it is, in all art, that what seems the easiest done is 
oftentimes the most difficult to do, and that the smallest 
good may come of the greatest pains — much as it occurred 
to me at Manchester, the other day, as I saw the sensitive 
touch of Mr. Whitworth's wonderful measuring machine, 
though Heaven and its maker only knew how much previous 
hammering and firing were required to bring it out. My 
companions in arms know thoroughly well, and I think it is 
riolit that the public should know too, that in our careful 
toil and trouble, and in our steady striving after excellence, 
not after any little gifts misused by fits and starts, lies our 
hio^hest duty at once to our calling, to one another, to our- 
selves, and to you (applause). Ladies and gentlemen, 
before sitting down I find I have to clear myself of two 
very unexpected accusations (hear, hear). The first is the 
most singular charge preferred against me by my old 
friend Lord Houghton, that I have been somewhat uncon- 
scious of the merits of the House of Lords (laughter). 
Now, ladies and gentlemen, seeing that I have had some 
few not altogether obscure or unknown personal friends 
in that assembly ; seeing that I had some little association 
with and knowledge of a certain obscure peer little known 
in England by the name of Lord Brougham (renewed 
laughter) ; seeing that I regard with some admiration and 
atfection another obscure peer wholly unknown in literary 
circles, called Lord Lytton (continued laughter) ; seeing 
also that I had for some years some slight admiration for 
the extraordinary judicial properties and amazingly acute 
mind of a certain Lord Chief Justice, popularly known by 
the name of Lord Cockburn (loud applause and laughter) ; 
and also seeing that there is no man in England whom I 



SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 293 

respect more in his public capacity, Tvhom I love more in 
his private capacity, or from whom I have received more 
remarkable proofs of his honor and love of literature, than 
another obscure nobleman called Lord Russell (renewed 
applause and laughter) ; taking these things into considera- 
tion I was rather amazed by my noble friend's accusation. 
When I asked him, on his sitting down, what amazing devil 
possessed him to make this charge, he replied that he had 
never forgotten the days of Lord Yerisopht (laughter). 
Then, ladies and gentlemen, I understood it all, because it is 
a remarkable fact that in the days when that depreciative 
and profoundly unnatural character was invented, there was 
no Lord Houghton in the House of Lords (loud laughter and 
applause). There was in the House of Commons a rather 
indifferent member called Richard Monckton Milnes (con- 
tinued laughter). Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude (cries 
of " No," and " Go on,") — for the present (laughter). To 
conclude, I close with the other charge of my noble friend ; 
and here I am more serious, and I may be allowed, perhaps, 
to express my seriousness in half-a-dozen plain words. 
When I first took literature as my profession in England I 
calmly resolved within myself that, whether I succeeded or 
whether I failed, literature should be my sole profession 
(hear, hear, and applause). It appearedHo me at that time 
that it was not so well understood in England as it was in 
other countries that literature was a dignified i3rofession 
(hear, hear), b}^ which any man might stand or fall (hear, 
and applause). I made a compact within myself that in 
my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and 
for itself (hear, hear); and there is no consideration upon 
earth which would induce me to break that bargain (hear, 
and loud applause). Ladies and gentlemen, finally, allow 
me to thank 3^ou for 3^our great kindness, and for the touch- 
ing earnestness with which you have drank my health. I 
should have thanked 3"ou with all m}^ heart if it had. so un- 
fortunately happened that for many sufficient reasons I lost 
my heart between half-past six and half-past seven o'clock 
to-night (loud and prolonged cheering). 

I have given the above in full, as the last speech of any 
importance made by Mr. Dickens, and conveying a fair idea 
of his manner. The plaj^ful allusion to the House of Lords, 
was elicited bv a querulous observation, in a previous speech 



294 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

by Lord Houghton, that Mr. Dickens had dealt rather harshly, 
in his writings, with the British peerage, — into which body 
Lord H. had himself been elevated only half a dozen 3'ears 
ago. A well-known expression of the late Earl Gr^y was 
" I will stand by my order," and Lord Houghton, formerly 
Mr. R. M. Milnes, who has published several volumes of 
verses, besides editing Keats' Poems, was huffed at Mr. 
Dickens' small respect for the aristocracy. As it happened, 
the only person supposed to be connected in the works of 
" Boz," with that august body, was Lord Frederick Yeri- 
sopht, for whom the reader must feel pity rather than 
dislike. Mr. Dickens showed his readiness of retort, in his 
improvised reply to Lord Houghton's unexpected charge. 

Mr. Dickens proposed a toast towards the close of the 
proceedings. He said : 

Gentlemen — for I address myself solely to you — the na- 
ture of the toast I am about to propose cannot, I think, 
be better or more briefly expressed than in a short quota- 
tion from Shakespeare, slightly altered : 

Scene. — A Banquet Hall, Thunder— of admiration. Lightning — 

of eyes. 

Banquo. — What are these, 

So sparkling, and so brigbt in their attire 
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, 
And yet are on 't ? 

(loud laughter and applause). Sir, these are the "Lan- 
cashire Witches," (applause). Pondering this turn in ray 
mind just now, and looking around this magnificent hall, I 
naturally pondered also on the legend of its patron saint. 
It is recorded of St. George that he was even more devoted 
to love and beauty than the other Six Champions of Christen- 
dom, (laughter and applause) ; and I, his loyal imitator and 
disciple, have moulded myself completely upon him in look- 
ing around me here. 

How happy could I be with either 
Were t'other dear charmer away, 

is a sentiment that was first put in writing some few ages 
after St. George's time. But I have a profound conviction 



ILL HEALTH. 295 

that he would have written it if he could but have projected 
himself into this occasion, (laughter). However, he was 
much better employed in killing the dragon, (cries of " Oh,") 
0, 3'es, much better employed in killing the dragon, who 
would have devoured the lad}^ ; and he was much better em- 
ployed still in marrying the lady and enslaving himself by 
freeing her. The legend, as I remember, goes on to relate 
that the accursed brood of dragons after that time retired 
to inaccessible solitudes, and was no more seen except on 
especial occasions, (laughter). Now it appeared to me that 
if any of these dragons should yet be lingering in retire- 
ment, and if they should have any virtue and bewitching 
sixth sense, or the slightest notion of the havoc that will be 
wrought amongst St. George's descendants b^'this assembly 
of glowing beauty here to-night, then the dragon race is 
even with St. George's at last, and is most terribl}^ avenged, 
(laughter and applause). Gentlemen, I give you " The 
Ladies." 



On the 22d of April, 1869, when Mr, Dickens was to have 
given a reading in " proud Preston," he was suddenl}^ taken 
ill. Mr. Beard, his medical attendant, was summoned from 
London, and, in conjunction with Dr. Charles Watson, issued 
this document: "We certify that Mr. Charles Dickens has 
been seriously unwell through excessive exhaustion and 
fatigue of bod}^ and mind, consequent upon his public read- 
ings and long and frequent railway journeys. In our judg- 
ment, Mr. Dickens will not be able, with safety to himself, 
to resume his readings for several months to come." 

Mr. Dickens was to have presided at the Newsveudors' 
Dinner, on April 26th, but his son stated that, although his 
father had been seriously indisposed, there was no cause for 
alarm. It was true that he would be prevented, for some 
time, from appearing in the capacity of a public "reader," 
but he would still be enabled to attend to his literary duties, 
which would be continued as heretofore. 

He retired to his residence, at Gad's Hill, Kent, settling 
down to his countr}^ life, and laying the foundation of a new 
story, — " The Mydery of Edwin Drood.^^ 



296 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

In August 1869, a request was made that Mr. Dickens 
would deliver an address, on the completion of the Leigli 
Hunt Memorial, (a bust) in Kensal Green Cemeter}^ but 
declined. His note to Mr. Oilier says, "I am very sensible 
of the feeling of the committee towards me ; and I received 
their invitation (conveyed through you) as a most accepta- 
ble mark of their consideration. But I have a very strong 
objection to speech-making beside graves. I do not expect 
or wish my feelings in this wise to guide other men ; still, it 
is so serious with me, and the idea of ever being the subject 
of such a ceremony m3'self is so repugnant to my soul, that 
I must decline to officiate." 

On the 30th of the same month, the third daj' after the 
celebrated Oxford and Harvard boat-race, he attended at the 
dinner given, in the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham, by the Lon- 
don Rowing Club, to the contending crews, and said that 
he had been permitted to propose the toast of the evening, 
namely, " The Health of the Oarsmen of the Harvard and 
Oxford Universities." Oxford (he said) was only repre- 
sented b}^ one member, Mr. Willan, who in spite of difficul- 
ties, in spite of family inconvenience, was present. Oxford 
had given up her position to Harvard in the toast ; indeed, 
she seemed glad to offer any advantage or triumph to Har- 
vard whatever, except the advantage and triumph of beating 
her. It is not long since a book appeared in America, giving 
the lives of ninety-five gentlemen of Harvard University who 
entered the American Army during the Civil War and who 
died in that cause. Not less to be admired, not less to be 
honored, were that set of gentlemen who had come over 
here to challenge the Oxford crew, the flower of English 
oarsmen. They had lost, but it was no dishonor to them to 
have been beaten by the best crew that England could put 
forth. He proposed " The Health of Harvard and Oxford," 
which "was acknowledged by Mr. Willan and Mr. Lyman, 
respectively. Mr. Dickens had attended, that day, against 
medical advice, — his excuse being that the subject being 



GAD'S HILL. 29T 

as much American as English, he felt himself bound in 
honor to be present. 

Gad's Hill House, which very much resembles an American 
country-mansion, two-story high, with what are called 
"dormer windows" in the roof, had a roomj^ hall in the 
centre, and two bow or oriel windows, one over the other, 
on each side. It has a comfortable, old-fashioned look, was 
surrounded b}^ fine trees of many years growth, and its lawn, 
nicely laid out, looks very pretty from the road. The only 
objection to the house is that it is too near the road, — pro- 
bably, this was no defect in its owner's eyes, for he was fond 
of standing at his front door, leaning against one of the 
pilasters, and chatting to his children, grand-children and 
friends. He was a social man, and delighted to see happy 
faces, to hear joyous voices. Hans Christian Andersen, as 
I have previously stated, was a guest at Gad's Hill, in June 
185T — nearly a year before the cloud fell, in all men's view, 
u[)on his domestic life. A few days before his death, Mr. 
Dickens had invited Andersen to repeat his visit this 
autumn. 

Five-and-twenty j-ears ago, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, who 
was warmly attached to Dickens, frankly told him that he 
would be a richer man, as well as a better author, by re- 
treating from the entanglements and expenses of a London 
life. He suggested a residence — such as Dickens since had 
at Gad's Hill — within a convenient distance of London. 
This would avoid Sunday dinner-parties and the extrava- 
gances, dissipations, and temptations of a London life, and 
also give him more leisure to think, and a clearer head to 
work with. 

A friend of Dickens, who knew him from childhood, and 
dearly loved him to the last, wrote to me, a few j^ears 
ago, saying, " There does not live a larger-hearted or a 
better-minded man than Dickens. He is liberal to a fault. 
He allowed his wife's relations to hang upon him, to infest 
his house, and to drain his purse for years. The great fault 



298 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

of his character is ostentation. With all his sagacity, Dick- 
ens is eternally afraid of hein g slighted. He never seems to 
be at ease — not even in his own house. His restless eye 
wanders, like a comet in a cage, beating the bars of his eye- 
lashes to escape. He has alwaj^s seemed to me as if he had 
something on his mind as well as in it. He danced the tight- 
rope of display for years. He has now carried out the plan 
suggested to him by Talfourd, and also by Lord Jeffre}^, and 
lives out of London, but near enough to enjoy it, when he 
pleases. A more truly genial man than Dickens does not 
live. He likes to see others enjoy themselves, while Thack- 
eray seems to care only for enjo3'ing himself. One con- 
stantly hears of kind actions done by Dickens. In the 
possession of a good heart, as well as vast genius, I think 
that Dickens very closely resembles Walter Scott." 

It is well-known, now, that even when a school-bo}^, Dick- 
ens admired the house at Gad's Hill. In mature manhood, 
when he accidentally heard the place was in the market, he 
purchased it. He expended a good deal upon improvements. 
In June, 1857, when he entered into possession, he still had 
Tavistock House as a town residence, being compelled to 
retain it until his lease had run out, or he had given suffi- 
cient " notice to quit," or something of the sort. 

Mrs. L. K. Lip])incott, (then Miss Clarke,) has lately writ- 
ten in the N. Y. Tribune, her recollections of a dinner at Mr. 
Dickens's in June 1852. She says, " I have in my mind still 
a perfectly distinct picture of the bright, elegant interior of 
Tavistock House, and of its inmates — of my host himself, then 
in his early prime — of Mrs. Dickens, a plump, rosy, English, 
handsome woman, with a certain air of absent-mindedness, 
3^et gentle and kindlj^ — Miss Hogarth, a very lovely person, 
with charming manners — and the young ladies, then ve7y 
young — real English girls, fresh and simple, and innocent- 
looking as English daisies. I was received in the library. 
Mr. Dickens — how clearl}^ he stands before me now, with his 
frank, encouraging smile and the light of welcome in his 



INTERVIEWED BY A LADY. 299 

e^-es ! — was then slight in person, and rather pale than other- 
wise. The symmetrical form of his head, and the fine, 
spirited bearing of the whole figure, struck me at once — 
then the hearty bonhomie, the wholesome sweetness of his 
smile ; but more than anything else, the great beauty of his 
eyes." 

Miss Clarke questioned Mr. Dickens very closely about 
his modes of study and writing, and he answered her frankly 
and i)atieutly : "I asked," she reports, "if certain char- 
acters which I pointed out, generally esteemed very peculiar 
and eccentric, if not positively unnatural and impossible, 
were not altogether beings of the mind, pure creatures of 
his own fancy ; and he said explicitly that the most fan- 
tastic and terrible of his characters were the most real — the 
'unnatural' were the natural — the 'exaggerations' were 
just those strange growths, those actual human traits he 
had copied most faithfully from life. Sam Weller, wdiom 
everybody recognized as an acquaintance, was not a real 
but quite an imaginary personage, he said — was only the 
representative of a class." She observed the exquisite order 
and nicety of his study-table, and asked him if he actually 
did his every-day work there. "Oh, yes," he said, "I sit 
here and write, through almost every morning." ** Does 
the spirit always come upon you at once ?" " No — some- 
times," he answered, "I have to coax it; sometimes I do 
little else than draw figures or make dots on the paper, and 
plan and dream till perhaps my time is nearly up. But I 
always sit here, for that certain time." She asked whether, 
in case the flow of inspiration did not come till near the 
hour for lunch, or exercise, he lefc that seat when the hour 
struck, or remained? "I go at once," he said, ''hardly 
waiting to complete a sentence. I could not keep my 
health otherwise. I let nothing deprive me of my tramp." 
Lastly, came an inquiry, which shows that the lady had 
thought the matter over closely. "I asked," she says, "if 
the mental work did not go on as he walked, and he said 



300 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

he supposed it alwiws did in some degree, especiall}^ when 
he was alone, yet that he thought he saw ahnost all that 
was to be seen in his walks about London and Paris — 
indeed ever^^where he went ; that he had trained his e^^e and 
ear to let nothing escape him ; that he had received most 
valuable suggestions and hints of character in that way." 

This is a point on which much depended. It has long 
been my belief that the long walks in which Mr. Dickens 
systematically indulged, as if to compensate for labor of the 
mind by fatigue of the body, may have been injurious. Say 
that he was writing a book, he would work at it from nine 
to half-past twelve or one ; at the exact moment, he would lay 
down his pen, scarcely waiting to finish the sentence. He 
would start on a three hours walk — usually without a com- 
panion. And, all through that long and solitary walk, even 
while his eyes saw and his ears heard all that passed before 
him, a continuous and severe mental process must have 
been going on. It would have been next to an impossibility 
for an author, and such an author, when he rose from his 
writing-table, to have dismissed all thought about the work 
he was composing. He must be thinking of it, as he walked, 
and thus, though he sought to gain quiet of mind at the 
expense of toil of body, he reallj^ was continuing the intel- 
lectual toil. It may be doubted whether Mr. Dickens's long 
walks were for the benefit of mind or hody. 

Hans Christian Andersen, quick and comprehensive in 
his observation, wrote : " When in London, Charles Dickens 
lives in Tavistock House. A grated gate separates the 
3^ard and garden from the livel}^ street. In the rear of the 
house extends a larger garden, with several lawns and tall 
trees, and imparts a rural appearance to the whole in the 
midst of smoking and dusty London. In the passage lead- 
ing from the street to the garden there hung paintings and 
copper-plates ; here stood Dickens's marble bust, life-like, 
young, and handsome, and the doors to the bed-chambers 
and dining-rooms were surmounted by Thorwaldsen's bas- 



HANS ANDERSEN AT GAD'S HILL. 301 

reliefs of Night and Day. On the first floor was a large 
librar}^, with a fire-place and writing-table, and in the large 
room opening upon the garden, Dickens and his family and 
friends amused themselves in winter by performing plays. 
The kitchen is in the basement, and the bed-rooms are on 
the upper floor. When I came to London, I was quartered 
in a pleasant room opening upon the garden, whence I saw, 
above the trees, the Tower of London loom up or disappear, 
according to the clearness of the weather. It was a long 
way from here to the centre of business-life." 

The proper address of Gad's Hill House was " Higham 
-by-Rochester, Kent." This is a station on the railroad to 
Rochester, and is scarcely two miles from Mr. Dickens's 
house. Andersen continued : 

Now there lies on the broad high road Dickens's villa, 
whose turret, with the gilded weathercock, I had already 
descried from afar, above the tops of the trees. It was a 
fine, new house, with red walls and four bow-windows, and a 
jutting entrance supported by pillars, in the gable a large 
window. A dense hedge of cherry-laurel surrounded the 
house, in front of which extended a neat lawn, and on the 
opposite side rose two mighty cedars of Lebanon, whose 
crooked branches spread their green fan over another large 
lawn surrounded by ivy and wild vines, the hedge being so 
dense and dark that no sunbeam was able to penetrate it. 

As soon as I stepped into the house, Dickens came to 
meet me, kindly and cordially. He looked somewhat older 
than he did when he bade me farewell ten years ago, but 
that was, perhaps, in part owing to the beard which he now 
wore ; his eyes still sparkled as they had done at that time, 
the same smile played round his lips, and his dear voice 
sounded as sweet and pleasant, nay, more so than formerly. 
Dickens was now in the prime of life, still so youthful, so 
active, so eloquent, so rich in the most pleasant humor, 
through which his sterling kind-heartedness alwaj^s beamed 
forth. As he stood before me in the first hour, so he was 
and remained during all the weeks which I passed in his 
company, merry, good-natured, and full of charming sym- 
pathy. 

In the room where we assembled with some of the children 

19 



302 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

round the breakfast table, it was quiet and pleasant, and 
Sundaylike ; a wealth of roses surrounded the large win- 
dows on the outside, and the view extended over the garden, 
the beautiful fields beyond the hedges, and the hills border- 
ing the horizon, in the rear of Rochester. An excellent 
portrait of Cromwell hung over the fire-place, and among 
the other paintings adorning the walls all around, there was 
one which attracted my attention particularly. It repre- 
sented a caleche, in which were seated two j^oung ladies, 
absorbed in reading a book, whose pages were headed 
" Bleak House," The little groom, seated in the box 
behind, bent forward, and furtively read also in the book. 
A few birds in cages sung the more merrily the more ani- 
mated the conversation grew in the dining-room. 

During the meal, Dickens took the seat of the head of the 
family at the upper end of the table, and, according to the 
English custom, said a short praj^er after he had seated 
himself; my seat was by his side during the whole of my 
visit. 

Dickens then had no less than nine children, two grown 
daughters, Mary and Kate, and seven sons : Charles, Wal- 
ter Savage Landor, Francis Jeffrey, Alfred Tennyson, 
Sidney Smith, Henry Fielding, and Edward Lytton Bulwer. 
The two eldest and the two youngest were at home ; the 
other three came on a visit from Boulogne, in France, where 
they were at a boarding school. It was vacation time, and 
I saw them climb in the branches of the large cedar trees, or 
play at cricket with their other brothers and their father, 
all of them in shirt-sleeves, on the large meadow close to the 
garden ; the ladies sat in the tall grass under the trees, 
peasant children peeped over the hedge, and Turk, the 
watch dog, who was fastened all night, had now been 
delivered from his chain and led the life of a free dog, while 
his long chain and his kennel were left to a big, old raven, 
who no doubt considered himself a relative to the Raven in 
" Barnaby Rudge," which, though stuffed, still existed, and 
was to be seen in the house. 

When I arrived at Gad's Hill the family had not yet been 
two weeks at their new country-seat ; both the environs and 
all the drives were new to them. Meanwhile I myself soon 
found out the most attractive points, and to one of them, 
the summit of Gad's Hill, I conducted Dickens and his 
family. Our way led across the broad highroad on which, 



ANDERSEN'S MONUMENT. 303 

opposite to Dickens's villa, there lies a tavern, on the faded 
sign of which Falstaffand Prince Henr}^ and on the reverse 
a scene from the Blerry Wives of Windsor are represented. 
From the tavern a ravine, between live hedges led up to 
a group of peasant houses, all two-storied, and their walls 
beautifully clad with vine and creepers ; long, neat, white 
curtains hung in the windows ; the highest house was 
watched by an old blind dog, cows and sheep were 
grazing on the meadows, and on this highest point there 
rose an obelisk. The whole monument was cracked, and 
the first gust of wind might upset it. The inscription 
was no longer distinctly legible, but we saw that the 
monument had been erected in honor of an excellent 
country gentleman who had died many, many years ago. 
Inasmuch as I was the first to lead Dickens to this point, 
he afterwards called the place, jocosely, " Hans Christian 
Andersen's monument." 

We enjoyed here a panoramic view of the country, as 
beautiful as it was extensive. The north of Kent is justly 
called the garden of England. The scenery is similar to 
that of Denmark, though more luxuriant and richer. The 
QjQ sweeps over green meadows, yellow cornfields, forests, 
peat moors, and, when the weather is clear, one may see the 
North Sea in the distance. The landscape, it is true, does 
not present a lake, but you behold everywhere the Thames, 
whose silver thread is meandering for manj^ miles through 
the green grounds. We still found, on the summit of the 
hill, traces of the ancient intrenchments from the time of 
the Romans. We went up there man}' an evening, and sat 
down in a circle on the grass, and gazed at the setting sun, 
whose beams were reflected in the bends of the Thames, 
pouring over the river a golden lustre, on which the vessels 
stood forth like dark silhouettes. From the chimneys of 
the country houses all around, rose blue smoke ; the crickets 
were chirj^ing, and the whole scene p^resented a lively picture 
of peace, heightened by the sweet sound of the evening 
bells. A bowl of claret, adorned with a bouquet of brown 
field flowers, passed around our circle. The moon rose, 
round, large and red, until she shone in silvery lustre, and 
filled me with the fancy that all this w^as but a beautiful 
Midsummer night's dream in the land of Shakespeare ; and 
yet it was more ; it was reality. I sat by Dickens's side, 
and saw and heard him enjoy to the utmost the charming 
evening which, as it was reflected in his soul, was sure to be 



304 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

used by him for a new, glorious creation of his wonderful 

imagination. 

This was Gad's Hill House, in 1851. Let us take a later 
view. Mr. Franklin Philp, of Washington, who was on 
very intimate terms with Mr. Dickens, has allowed a por- 
tion of his diary to be published, containing his impressions 
of Gad's Hill. He had been a guest of the great novelist : 

July 25, 1869. Went to Charing Cross Station at 10.40, 
met Dickens there, (by appointment), accompanied Mr. 
Dickens ; his daughter ; his sister-in-law ; Miss Stone, (sister 
of Marcus Stone, the artist); Charles Kent, editor of The Sun; 
to Higham, by rail — gentlemen walked up to Gad's Hill — 
ladies sent on in carriage. On arrival, (half-past twelve), 
commenced with "cider cup," which had previously been 
ordered to be ready for us — delicious cooling drink — cider, 
soda water, sherry, brandy, lemon peel, sugar and ice, flavored 
with an herb called borage, all judiciously mixed. Lunch 
at one o'clock, completed by a liqueur which Dickens said 
was ''peculiar to the house." From two to half-past five 
we were engaged in a large open meadow at the back of the 
house, in the healthful and intellectual employment of play- 
ing "Aunt Sally," and rolling balls on the grass ; at half- 
past three, interval for "cool brandy and water;" at half- 
past six o'clock we dined — young Charles Dickens, and a 
still younger Charles Dickens, (making three generations), 
having arrived in the meantime — dinner faultless, wines 
irreproachable ; nine to ten, billiards ; ten to eleven, music 
in the drawing-room ; eleven, "hot and rebellious liquors," 
delightfully compounded into punches ; twelve, to bed. 

The house is a charming old mansion, a little modernized ; 
the lawn exquisitely beautiful, and illuminated b}" thou- 
sands of scarlet geraniums ; the estate is covered with mag- 
nificent old trees, and several "Cedars of Lebanon" I have 
never seen equalled. In the midst of a small plantation, 
across the road opposite the house, approached by a tunnel 
from the lawn under the turnpike road, is a French chalet, 
sent to Dickens as a present in ninety-eight packing cases ! 
Here Mr. Dickens does most of his writing, where he can 
be perfectly quiet and not disturbed by anybody. I need 
scarcely say that the house is crowded with fine pictures, 
origirial sketches for his books, choice engravings, etc. ; in 



GAD'S HILL PLACE. 305 

fact, one might be amused for a month in looking over the 
objects of interest, which are numerous and beautiful. 

Inside the hall are portions of the scenery painted by 
Stanfield for the " Frozen Deep," the play in which Dickens 
and others performed for the benefit of Douglas Jerrold's 
family, written by Wilkie Collins. Just as you enter, in a 
neat frame, written and illuminated by Owen Jones, is the 
following : 

This House, 

Gad's Hill Place, 

stands on the summit of Shakespeare's Gad's Hill, 
ever memorable for its association, in his noble 
fancy, with Sir John Falstaff. 

"But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning by 
four o'clock, early at Gad's Hill. There are pil- 
grims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and 
traders riding to London with fat purses. I have 
visors for all ; you have horses for yourselves." 

In the dining-room hangs Frith's original picture of 
Dolly Yarden, and Maclise's portrait of Dickens when a 
young man ; also Cattermole's wonderful drawings, illus- 
trating some of Dickens's most touching scenes, besides 
several exquisite works by Marcus Stone, (who illustrated 
"Our Mutual Friend,") David Roberts, Calderon, Stanfield, 
and others. 

My bed-room was the perfection of a sleeping apartment — 
the view across the Kentish Hills, with a distant peep of 
the Thames, charming ; the screen, shutting off the dress- 
ing-room from the bed-room, is covered with proof-impres- 
sions (neatly framed) of the illustrations to "Our Mutual 
Friend," and other works ; in every room I found a table 
covered with writing materials, headed note paper and en- 
velopes, cut quill pens, wax, matches, sealing wax, and all 
scrupulously neat and orderly. 

There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs 
on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to 
paint. One of them, Bumble, seems to be the favorite with 
Dickens. They are all named after characters in his works. 

Dickens, at home, seems to be perpetually jolly, and 
enters into the interests of games with al] the ardor of a 



30R LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

boy. Physically (as well as mentally) he is immenselv 
strong, having quite regained his wonted health and sTrenlth 
He IS an immense walker, and never seems to be fati<.ued' 
He n-eakfasts at eight o'clock; immediately after answers 
all the letters received that morning, writes until oneollock 
lunches, walks twelve miles, (eveiy day) dines at six nnrl" 
passes the evening entertaining his numerouslriends ' 

rJ ,1 •"!; ''■''?". " ^"^ ^'^ '■^ther frequently took him 
for a walk m the vicinity of Gad's Hill, and he always had 
a desire to become some day the owner of the hJuse in 
which he now resides. "■ 

In August, 1869, so runs the story, a party of excursionists, 
fi-om Chatham, had been spending the day in the vicinity of 
Uad s Hill, when on their return in the evening, they fell in 
with a couple of dancing bears, which were going throu<.h 
tlieir performances in the road in front of Mr. Dickens's hous°e 
The enjoyments of the day having had their customary 
effects on the excursionists, one of the men, more elated 
than his companions, insisted on joining the bears in their 
performances, and dancing with them, the keepers in vain 
attempting to prevent him. At length with the intention 
of causing him to desist, the keeper removed the muzzle of 
one of the bears, but this failed to stop the dance. By this 
time a great crowd had assembled, when Mr. Dickens see- 
ing the serious turn matters were assuming, appeared on 
the scene, and himself assisted in remuzzling the bear at 
the same time good-humoredly addressing the crowd and 
restoring peace between the enraged keepers of the bears 
and the author of the too serious frolic. 

After Mr. Dickens returned to Englai;d, in 1868, he wrote 
three magazine articles for American m.igazines : for "Our • 
Young Folks," the Holiday Romance, and for the Atlantic 
Monthly, a story entitled George Sil,erman's Explanation 
and a paper introducing Mr. Fechter, the player, to the 
American public, before whom he was about appearino- He 
was a warm admirer of Mr. Fechter, and M. Paul Feval has 
related upon no authority, a remarkable anecdote of the ac- 
tor s having incurred a debt of £3,000 by his mismauaeement 



FAREWELL READINGS. 30t 

of the Lyceum Theatre, in London ; of Dickens having paid 
this nione}^ for him without being asked ; and of the actor's 
delight at finding himself thus freed from a heavy embar- 
rassment. Mr. Dickens was impulsive and generous, but 
having the future of a large family to care for, it may be 
very much doubted whether he ever committed the pecu- 
niary folly thus imputed to him by his French admirer. 
Except in romances, and those of the wildest character, 
men of letters, however rich and well-disposed, do not make 
presents of three thousand pounds to their histrionic friends ! 
Towards the close of 1869, Mr. Dickens resumed his Read- 
ings in London, and prepared for the press the " Religious 
Opinions of his friend, the Rev. Chauncey Hare Townshend," 
who had bequeathed him a handsome legacy on condition 
that he would edit his literar}^ remains. By this time, too, 
the plot of Edwin Drood had been blocked out and part of 
the tale written. 



CHAPTER, XXIL 

FAREWELL READINGS. — MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. — VISITS 
QUEEN VICTORIA. — HONORS DECLINED. — SPEECH AT ROYAL 
ACADEMY. — ILL HEALTH THE LAST WEEK. — CLOSING COR- 
RESPONDENCE. — HIS CHRISTIAN BELIEF AND HOPE. — APO- 
PLEXY. — DEATH. — GRIEF FROM THRONE TO COTTAGE. — 
BURIAL IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. DEAN STANLEY'S SER- 
MON ON CHARLES DICKENS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

It was announced, early in 18Y0, that Mr. Dickens had so 
far completed a new work, that its first monthlj^ number, 
"between green leaves," would be published in April ; only, 
it was to be completed in twelve instead of twenty parts. He 
brought his Readings to a final close. On the evening of 
March 15th, 1870, he appeared for the last time before an 
audience which included intellect as well as fashion, and 



308 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

which had then as little thought as himself that they heard 
him for the last time. 

" The last ! the last ! Oh, by that little word, 
How many thoughts are stirred." 

In the few sentences which he spoke, ere he retired for- 
ever from public view, were these : 

I have thought it well, at the full flood-tide of your favor, 
to retire upon those older associations between us, which 
date from much further back than these, and henceforth to 
devote myself exclusively to the art that first brought us 
together. Ladies and gentlemen, in but two short weeks 
from this time, I hope that you may enter, in your own 
houses, on a new " Series of Readings," at which my assist- 
ance will be indispensable; but from these garish lights I 
vanish now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respect- 
ful, and affectionate farewell. 

The new serial, illustrated by a new artist (Mr. S. L. 
Fildes), caused a great deal of discussion. The general 
opinion on the portion of The Mystery of Edwin Drood 
already published, is not overpoweringly favorable. One- 
half of the work is completed. Its author was engaged 
in composition on the very day that he was death-smit- 
ten. He had labored, more than on any former work, 
to obtain complete success. So anxious was he to be 
accurate, that he sought out Sir John Bowring, who had 
been British Ambassador to China, and also Governor of 
Hong Kong, and made particular inquiries from him as to 
the manner, extent, and effects of opium smoking in that 
country. But he appears to have been haunted by a dread 
of failure. He wrote and re-wrote, revised and corrected, 
made excisions and additions, and, alwa^^s addicted, like 
Burke and Canning, to a course of proof-reading which 
ofttimes almost remodelled the text, almost broke the com- 
positors' hearts by the number and variety of his correc- 
tions. It might almost be said : 

*'His trembling hand had lost the ease 
Which marks security to please." 



QUEEN VICTORIA'S GUEST. 309 

The Muse, it seemed, was coy, at last, and refused to be 
won as freely as of yore. He was afraid, too, that he had 
allowed the *' mystery " of his hero to be too readily guessed 
at. He continued his long walks, now rather of duty than 
of pleasure, and had lost much of the strength and activity 
which had distinguished him. He did not walk with ease — 
the elastic spring which had carried him forward at the rate 
of over four miles to the hour, without pause or rest, had 
departed. 

At this time, a circumstance occured which greatly grati- 
fied him. Queen Victoria had obtained a right to have 
her name placed upon the roll of "Royal and Noble Au- 
thors," by her publishing a volume concerning the " Earl}'' 
Daj^s of Albert, the late Prince Consort." The late General 
Grey, private secretary to the Queen, had prepared this 
volume for the press, and the fact of its being a Royal work 
awakened interest in its favor, and curiosity. Early in 1810 
the Queen presented a copy of it to Mr. Dickens, with 
the modest autographic inscription, " from the humblest 
to the most distinguished author of England." This was 
meant to be complimentary, and was accepted as such by 
Mr. Dickens, who acknowledged it in a manly, courteous 
letter. Soon after, Queen Yietoria wrote to him, requesting 
that he would do her the favor of paying her a visit at 
Windsor. He accepted, and passed a day, very pleasantly, 
in his Sovereign's society It is said that they were mutu- 
ally pleased, that Mr. Dickens caught the royal lady's par- 
ticular humor, that they chatted together in a very friendly 
manner, that the Queen was never tired of asking questions 
about certain characters in his books, that they had almost 
a tete-d-tele luncheon, and that, ere he departed, the Queen >, 
pressed him to accept a baronetcy (a title which descends j 
to the eldest son), and that, on his declining, she said " At | 
least, Mr. Dickens, let me have the gratification of making 
you one of my Privy Council." This, which gives the per- 
sonal title of "Right Honorable," he also declined — nor, j 



310 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

indeed, did Charles Dickens require a title to give him 
celebrity. The Queen and the author parted, well pleased 
with each other. The newspapers reported that a peerage 
had been offered and declined — but even newspapers are not 
invariably correct. Mr. Dickens presented his Royal Mis- 
tress with a handsome set of all his works, and, on the very 
morning of his death, a letter reached Gad's Hill, written by 
Mr. Arthur Helps, by her desire, acknowledging the present, 
and describing the exact position the books occupied at Bal- 
moral — so placed that she could see them before her when 
occupying the usual seat in her sitting-room. When this 
letter arrived, Mr. Dickens was still alive, but wholly un- 
conscious. What to him, at that time, was the courtesy of 
an earthly sovereign 1 

The death of Mr. Daniel Maclise, R. A., one of the most 
distinguished among British artists, which took place in 
April of 1870, was a great blow to Mr. Dickens. The fame 
of artist and author had been of contemporary growth. 
There was little difference in their ages, and their friendship 
had lasted, without a cloud over it, for more than thirty 
3^ears. No doubt Mr. Dickens was shocked as well as 
grieved by this sudden blow. 

The last words spoken by Charles Dickens in public were 
characteristic of the man. The annual exhibition of the 
Roj^al Academy, in London, always opens on the first 
Monday in May, when there invariably is a splendid ban- 
quet, with the President in the chair, in the principal 
saloon, the walls of which are then covered with paint- 
ings, as yet unseen by the public at large. This is called 
the Private-view Dinner, and those whom the Academicians 
entertain, represent royalty, and the aristocrac}^ of title, 
office, wealth, and intellect. Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Dick- 
ens were always warmly welcomed and highly honored 
guests : it was expected, also, that they would speak. At 
the last of these banquets, on Saturday, 29th of April, 1870, 
Mr. Dickens was present. One of the finest paintings in 



TRIBUTE TO MACLISE. 311 

the exhibition was by Daniel Maclise, R. A., whose sudden 
death, such a short time before, had painfully impressed his 
colleagues and friends. This picture, entitled " The Earls 
of Desmond and Ormond," was one of the Irish subjects 
Maclise so much liked, and equals most of his previous pro- 
ductions in design, coloring, and expression, but is said by 
the critics to be rather deficient in execution, as if the 
painter had got tired of his work, and sent it away with- 
out giving it the last touches which do so much. Maclise 
had twice refused the Presidency of the Royal Academy, 
and was an honor to the institution. Mr. Dickens conclu- 
ded an excellent speech (the oration of the day, though 
evidently extempore), in a very impressive manner, as 
follows : 

Since I first entered the public lists, a very j^oung man 
indeed, it has been my constant fortune to number among 
my nearest and dearest friends members of the Roj^al 
Academy who have been its grace and pride. They have so 
dropped from my side one by one that I already begin to 
feel like the Spanish monk of whom Wilkie tells, who had 
grown to believe that the only realities around him were 
the pictures which he loved, and that all the moving life he 
saw, or ever had seen, was a shadow and a dream. For 
many 3^ears I was one of the two most intimate friends and 
most constant companions of the late Mr. Maclise. Of his 
genius in his chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, 
but of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth 
of intellect, I may confidently assert that they would have 
made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a 
writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest 
of men, the freest as to his generous appreciation of young 
aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his 
peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly 
sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain 
of self-assertion, wholesomely natural at the last as at the 
first, " in wit a man, in simplicity a child ;" no artist, of 
whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to 
his rest leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or 
having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art- 
goddess whom he worshipped. 



312 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS/ 

On the 15th of May, 1870, declining to accept an invi- 
tation to the Theatrical Fund Dinner, Mr. Dickens thus 
addressed Mr. Buckstone, the actor and manager: 

Sunday, Ibth May, 1870. 
My Dear Buckstone: — T send a duplicate of this note to 
the Haymarket, in case it should miss you out of town. 
For a few years I have been liable, at wholly uncertain and 
incalculable times, to a severe attack of neuralgia in the 
foot, about once in the course of a year. It began in an 
injury to the finer muscles or nerves, occasioned by over- 
walking in the deep snow. When it comes on I cannot stand, 
and can bear no covering whatever on the sensitive place. 
One of these seizures is upon me now. Until it leaves me, 
I could no more walk into St. James's Hall than I could fly 
in the air. I hope you will present my duty to the Prince 
[of Wales] and assure his Royal Highness that nothing short 
of my being (most unfortunately) disabled for the moment 
would have prevented my attending, as trustee of the Fund, 
at the dinner, and warmly expressing my poor sense of the 
great and inestimable service his Royal Highness renders 
to a most deserving institution by so kindly commending it 
to the public. Faithfully yours always, 

Charles Dickens. 

This seems to have been the first intimation to the public 
of his ill health. The complaint, a severe description of 
neuralgia, had severely afflicted him in America. 

On Thursday, June 2d, Mr. Dickens was in London, and 
" assisted " at some private theatricals, which seemed to give 
him much gratification, as usual. One of the performers 
was young Mr. Power, a son of Tyrone Power, the actor, 
who was lost in the '' President." As he had left his family 
badly off, Mr. Dickens had exerted himself, very successfully, 
to obtain from the public a pecuniary provision for them. 
Young Mr. Power is engaged in business, in Albemarle 
street, London, and, as might be expected, has a devoted 
regard for his benefactor. As they were coming out of the 
place of performance, Mr. Dickens put down his open palm 
upon his companion's shoulder, and answered a question 



HE WANTED REST. 313 

with the words, " I think you are very much improved in 
your performance. But, I must tell you that you never can 
become a great actor, and I recommend you by all means, 
not to give up business for the stage." As he was leaving, 
Mr. Power asked him when he again expected to be in Lon- 
don ? " Not for some time," he said. " I am tired. I want 
rest — res^," pronouncing the last word in a lingering tone. 
Mr. John E. McDonough received this anecdote from Mr. 
Power himself. Next day Mr. Dickens wrote this letter, in 
which it will be observed that he again mentions his com- 
plaint and its cause : 

Gad's IIill Place, HiGnAM-BY-RocHESTER, Kent, 

Friday, Srd June, 1870. 
Mr. Charles Dickens sends his compliments to Messrs. 
Pulvermacher and Co., and begs to say he wishes to tr}^ a 
Yoltaic Band across his right foot, as a remedy against what 
he supposes to be neuralgia there, (originating in overwalk- 
ing in deep snow,) to which he is occasionally liable. Mr. 
Dickens writes on the recommendation of Mrs. Bancroft, 
who assures him that she has derived great relief from a 
similar complaint from the use of one of these Bands. If 
Messrs. Pulvermacher and Co. will be so good as send him 
one, he will remit a cheque for its cost by return of post, and 
will give it the fairest trial. 

On Saturday, June 4th, having allowed some friends to 
have a fete champetre on his grounds, he visited them for 
about ten minutes, and then returned to his librarj^ saying 
that he was not very well and had a great deal to do. Every 
day, at this time, he wrote some portion of Edwin Drood. 
At this time, too, he examined the books, accounts, and 
vouchers of All the Year Round. He had, just before, exe- 
cuted a codicil to his will, written for him by his law3^er, but 
copied out in his own handwriting. This instrument be- 
queathed All the Year Round to his eldest son, Charles. 

On Tuesday he walked into Rochester, next day was 
Wednesday, 8th of June, 1870. Mr. Dickens wrote some 
pages oi Edwin Drood and several letters. One to Messrs. 



3U LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Pulvermacher & Co., enclosing a Post-office order for the 
"Voltaic Baud, ordered on the 3rd, and safely received. It 
concluded thus : — " It," the P. O. order, " has been obtained 
by mistake for a shilling or two more than the right 
amount. They can, if they please, return the balance in 
postage-stamps." Next, which shows how little he antici- 
pated any early termination to his labors and life, a note 
to Mr. Iloldsworth, manager of "All the Year Round," 
who had been connected with Mr. Dickens for a quarter 
of a centur}^, was dated that day before his death (June 
8th) and asked him to purchase at "one of those Great 
Queen Street shops " — who knew so well as Dickens about 
London brokers and their wares ? — a writing-slope for 
Gad's Hill, such as he had in use at the office. On that 
same day, Mr. Dickens wrote this note : 

Gad's Hill Place, Higham-by-Rochester, Kent, 

Wednesday, the Eighth of June, 18 tO. 
My Dear Kent : — To-morrow is a very bad day for me 
to make a call, as, in addition to my usual office business, I 
have a mass of accounts to settle. But I hope I may be 
ready for you at three o'clock. If I can't be — why, then I 
shan't be. You must really get rid of those opal enjoy- 
ments. They are too overpowering : 

These violent delights have violent ends. 

I think it was the father of j^our church who made the wise 
remark to a young gentleman who got up early (or stayed 
out late) at Verona. Ever atfectionately, 

Charles Dickens. 
To Charles Kent, Esq. 

The Athenaeum, wliich published the above, says, "the 
'opal enjoj^ments ' refer to the tints of the sky." Mr. 
Charles Kent, one of the most accomplished journalists and 
critics in London, is the author of a poem of great merit, 
entitled " Alatheia," of which a second edition was lately 
published. On Thursday, June 9th, when he called to keep 



HIS LAST LETTER. 315 

the appointment, Mr. Dickens was lying, in his dining- 
room, within three hours of his death. 

There was yet another letter, written and sent, on that 
fatal 8th of June. Some busy person, who signed " J. M. M.," 
had written to Mr. Diclvens, suggesting that a passage in the 
10th chapter of Edwin Brood was likely to wound the 
religious sensibilities of many of his admirers. The pas- 
sage most probably is the following, in reference to Mr. 
Crisparkle ; 

Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper 
staircase landing — a low and narrow whitewashed cell, 
where bunches of dried leaves hung from rusty hooks in the 
ceiling, and were spread out upon shelves, in company with 
portentious bottles— would the Reverend Septimus submis- 
sively be led, like the highly popular lamb who has so long 
and unresistingly, been led to the slaughter, and there would 
he, unlike that lamb, bore nobody but himself. 

It is difficult to see how any sensible person could put 
such a strained interruption upon this passage, as to fancy 
it irreligious. Mr. Dickens thus answered it : 

Gad's Hill Place, Higham-by-Rochester, Kent, 
Wednesday, the 8th June, 1870. 
Dear Sir : — It would be quite inconceivable to me — 
but for your letter — that au}^ reasonable reader could pos- 
sibly attach a scriptural reference to a passage in a book 
of mine, reproducing a much-abused social figure of speech, 
impressed into all sorts of service, -on all sorts of inappro- 
priate occasions, without the faintest connection of it with 
its original source. I am truly shocked to find that any 
reader can make the mistake. I have always striven in my 
writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of 
our Saviour ; because I feel it ; and because I rewrote that 
history for my children — every one of whom knew it from 
having it repeated to them, long before they could read, and 
almost as soon as they could speak. But I have never 
made proclamation of this from the house-tops. 

Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens. 



316 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

This statement, perhaps the last he ever wrote, ought 
to settle the questio vexata of Mr. Dickens's Christianity. 

On that same day, Wednesday, June 8th, after Mr. 
Dickens had sat down to dinner, about 6 o'clock. Miss 
Hogarth, the only person then present, observing an unusual 
expression in his face, and his eyes suffused in tears, said she 
feared that he was ill, and proposed to send or telegraph for 
medical assistance. He answered, rather feebly, "No, no, 
no ; I have got the toothache, and shall be well presently. " 
Almost in the same breath he desired that the window be 
closed. Immediately, he sank into a state of insensibility, 
from which he never rallied, never recovered. Mr. Frank 
Beard, his regular medical attendant in London was tele- 
graphed for, and arrived at Gad's Hill that evening. Dr. 
Steele, of the adjacent village of Strood, who regularly at- 
tended the family when they were in the country, was also 
there, and remained until midnight. From the first, Mr. 
Beard saw that the attack must terminate speedily and 
fatally. For his own satisfaction, and that of the family, he 
summoned Dr. Russell Rejmolds, who also pronounced the 
case hopeless. On Thursday morning, June 9th, Mr. 
Charles Dickens, Junior, arrived in London, from another 
part of the country, proceeded to Gad's Hill without delay, 
and was present at his father's death, which took place in 
the dining-room, at about a quarter past six p. M, There 
were also present, of the family, the author's two daughters 
and Miss Hogarth. From the moment of his attack, Mr. 
Dickens never uttered "a word, never appeared conscious. 
There was not any Coroner's inquest, the medical men 
expressly and positively declaring that the immediate cause 
was apoplexy — an effusion of blood on the brain — ^his sys- 
tem having been overstrained, and the result one which was 
only staved off twelve months before, when he was induced 
to obey his doctor's injunctions and to suspend his readings 
in public. He was 58 years, 4 months, and 3 days old. 

The first intimation of his illness, of his danger, was 



HIS DEATH. Sn 

published in a late edition of The Globe, an evening paper, — 
the statement being that he had been smitten by paral3'sis. 
The intelligence caused general anxiety, that evening. On 
the morrow, particulars of his seizure and death, were pub- 
lished in all the morning papers throughout the British 
Islands, and on the Continent. He was lamented by alL 
It was generally said, in London, that the great heart of 
England had not sustained such a shock since the death 
of the Princess Charlotte of Wales and her infant son, 
in November, 181Y, — when, from the inhabitants of the 
palace to those of the hovel, every one wore some badge of 
mourning. The intelligence was known throughout the 
United States, by noon, on the same day, and the afternoon 
papers, with equal energy and talent, not merely gave ex- 
tended sketches of his personal and professional career, but 
presented sound estimates of his character as an author and 
a man: — two Philadelphia evening papers particularly 
distinguished themselves in this respect. Next day, every 
morning paper had biographies of Charles Dickens, and 
suitable comments upon his life and death. The tone and 
execution of these articles were most creditable to the 
American press. Mr. Dickens knew — none better — that for 
ever}^ one reader he had at home, he had fifty in this country, 
and that he was more thoroughly understood here than 
even on his own soil. 

When the news of his death reached Queen Victoria, she 
sent a telegram to Gad's Hill House, expressing her deep 
sorrow. Other members of the royal family, of the nobility, 
of all ranks and classes did the same. A national loss had 
been sustained, and, in that hour of sorrow, the country spoke 
as with one voice. The dead man had been, in his works, 
an inmate in every household. He had never written to set 
class against class ; he had ever been the champion of the 
poor, the oppressed — and the afflicted. It was one consola- 
tion that, though he had not lived in a parsimonious manner, 
though his purse was ever open for benevolent purposes, he 

20 



318 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

had left ample provision for his family.* It had been in- 
tended that, in pursuance with his oft expressed wish, his 
mortal remains should be deposited at Rochester, in the 
shadow of the fine old Cathedral — the Cloisterham of his 
last, and unfinished story. Preparations were made for 
doing this ; but The Times, on June 11th, suggested that 
Westminster Abbey, the British Pantheon of England, was 
the proper place of sepulture for England's great author. 
By a coincidence of thought, which is not inexplicable, the 
same suggestion was made in the Washington Chronicle, of 
the same day. Mr. Gladstone eagerly sustained the sugges- 
tion, the Dean of Westminster also approving of it. Mr. 



* The Atheiiceum, apparently making the statement on authority, 
said, "The ample provision which Charles Dickens made for his 
family consists of some £43,000, invested in public securities, half 
the value of the copyright of the great novelist's books, estimated 
at £20,000, his modest house at Gad's Hill, together with its con- 
tents, and the interest in All the Year Bound, bequeathed to his eld- 
est son. Mr. Dickens was at all times a munificent and free-handed 
man, and never made the attainmeut of wealth a first object." The 
pictures, drawings, and objects of art and vertu in Gad's Hill House, 
were disposed of, in Christie, Manson & Wood's auction-rooms, on 
Saturday, July 9th. The articles, of more interest than value, 
were thus announced: — "The pictures comprise the celebrated 
portrait of Mr. Dickens, painted in 1839, by D. Maclise, R. A. ; 
three splendid pictures, illustrating 'The Frozen Deep,' painted 
by Clarkson Stanfield, R. A. ; 'Dolly Varden' and 'Kate Nickleby,' 
two charming works, by W. P. Frith, R. A. ; 'Dotheboys Hall,' 
an exquisite work of T. Webster, R. A. ; ' Pickwick and Mrs. 
Bardell,' by C. Leslie, R. A.; 'The Simoon,' by D. Roberts, 
R. A. ; ' A Girl at a Waterfall,' a very beautiful work of D. Mac- 
lise, R. A.; 'Hide and Seek,' and 'The Letter,' by P. H. Cal- 
deron, A. R. A. ; Portrait of Mr. Dickens in 'Used Up,' by A. 
Egg, A. R. A. ; 'Tilda Price,' by Frank Stone, A. R. A. ; ' 1'he 
Novel' and 'The Play,' by R. Hannah ; 'Miss F.'s Aunt,' by W. 
Gale. Tl^e Drawings include ' The Britannia,' the vessel in which 
Mr. Dickens first went to America, by C. Stanfield, R. A. ; also, 
'The Land's End,' and 'The Logan Rock,' by the same artist; 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 319 

Dickens had directed, in his will, that his funeral should 
be " unostentatious, and strictly private," and that his 
friends should not make him "the subject of any monu- 
ment, memorial, or testimonial whatever." His family, 
weighing these words, came to the conclusion that neither 
their letter nor spirit would be violated by a private inter- 
ment in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Here, from 
the London Times of Wednesday, June 15th, 18 tO, is a 
semi-official account of the funeral : 

Charles Dickens rests in the Abbey Church of St. Peter 
at Westminster. The funeral of the great novelist was cele- 
brated at an earh^ hour yesterday morning, in Poets' Corner, 
with as much privacy as could have been secured for it in 



'Little l^Tell's Home,' and 'Little Nell's Grave,' two master-pieces 
by G. Cattermole, illustrating ' The Old Curiosity Shop ;' ' Little 
Nell and her Grandfather,' and 'Barnaby Rudge and his Mother,' 
by F. W. Topham ; 'Beauvais Cathedral,' by S. Prout ; a very fine 
Flower Piece, by Yv^. Hunt; an illustration to 'The Cotter's Satur- 
day Night,' by Sir D. Williie, R. A. ; and several other interesting 
works, many of which were presented by the artists ; also the Silver 
Pickwick Ladles, with characters from the work, presented by the 
Publishers ; Bronzes, old Nankin blue and white, richly enamelled 
Pekin Porcelain, Parisian Clock and Candelabra, and a variety of 
decorative objects and plaster casts, and other interesting relics. " 
The friends of the deceased, and other patrons of literature and 
art, were numerous at that sale. "Dolly Varden," for which Mr. 
Dickens had paid £20 to Mr. Frith, the painter, brought £1,050. 
The portrait of Mr. Dickens, by Maclise, painted in 1889, brought 
£G93. Forty pictures, exclusive of fifteen drawings, realized nearly 
£8,000. "Grip," (the veritable raven of Barnaby Rudge,) stuffed, 
in a glass case, went for £126. The entire proceeds were £9,410, 
or thrice as much as the intrinsic value of the objects. For Gad's 
Hill House, advertised to be sold "in two lots," in August, a round 
sum of £20,000 had been offered, and more would probably be 
obtained by further competition. From all these sources, it may 
be estimated that Mr. Dickens left at least £90,000, (m gold,) to 
his family. 



320 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

any little village cliiirch in Kent, or even in Wales or Corn- 
wall. A grave had been dug during the night, and we be- 
lieve that we are right in asserting that, besides the Dean 
and Canons, hardly a member of the Cathedral body on 
Monday evening was aware of the intended arrangement. It 
appears that some days ago the Dean sent a communication 
to the family of Mr. Dickens to the effect that, if it was 
desired by themselves or by the public that he should be 
buried in the Abbey, he would do all in his power to facili- 
tate the arrangements ; and also that on Monday, suggesting 
that the Abbey was the fitting resting-place for such a man, 
he repeated the offer in terms more distinct. Most fortu- 
nately, it was found, upon opening Mr. Dickens's will, that, 
although his instructions were explicit in forbidding all pomp 
and show, and all that " mockery of woe" which undertakers 
are at such pains to provide, he had named no place of 
burial ; and therefore his executors felt that it was open to 
them to concur with the national wish, if they could only 
insure secrecy as to place and time.' This was arranged 
satisfactorily on Monday, and at an early hour on Tuesday 
morning the body was conveyed, almost before any one was 
stirring, in a hearse from Gad's Hill to one of the railway 
stations of the London, Chatham, and Dover line, whence 
it was forwarded to London by a special train, which reached 
the Charing Cross station punctually at nine o'clock. In a 
few minutes more the hearse, which was plainness in itself, 
was on its way down Whitehall to the Abbey, followed by 
the mourning coaches, and we believe that not a single per- 
son of the man}^ scores who must have met the gloomy 
cavalcade as it slowly passed along, was aware that that 
hearse was conve3ang to its last resting place all that was 
mortal of Charles Dickens. 

A few minutes before half-past nine the hearse and mourn- 
ing coaches — the latter, three in number — entered Dean's 
Yard, and the body was carried through the cloisters to the 
door of the nave, where it was met by the Dean, the two 
Canons in residence. Canon Jennings and Canon Nepean, 
and three of the Minor Canons. The choir were not pre- 
sent, and indeed, for the most part, were unaware that a 
grave had been opened in the Abbey, and that the sounds 
of the Burial Service were about to be heard there once 
more, more than half a year having passed by since the last 
funeral — that of Mr. Pcabody. The service was most im- 
pressively read by the Dean, all but the Lesson, which, was 



THE SEPULTURE. 321 

read by the Senior Canon. There was no anthem, no 
chanted psalm, no h3min, not even an intoned response or 
"Amen ;" but the organ was pkij^ed at intervals during the 
mournful ceremony. The earth was cast into the grave by 
the Clerk of the Works ; the service ended, the mourners, 
thirteen in number, gathered round the grave to take a 
last look at the coffin which held the great novelist's 
remains, and to place wreaths of immortelles and other 
flowers upon the coffin-lid, and the service was at an end. 

The coffin was of plain but solid oak, and it bore the 
plain and simple inscription : 

CHARLES DICKENS. 

BORN FEBRUARY TtH, 1812. 
DIED JUNE 9th, 18T0. 

His grave, which is only between five and six feet deep, 
is situated about a yard or a yard and a half from the 
southern wall of Poets'-corner ; the spot was selected by the 
Dean from among the few vacant spaces in that transept. 
Shakespeare's marble effigy looked yesterday into his open 
grave ; at his feet are Dr. Johnson and David Garrick ; his 
head is b}^ Addison and Handel, while Oliver Goldsmith, 
Rowe, Southey, Campbell, Thompson, Sheridan, Macaulay, 
and Thackeray, or their memorials, encircle him ; and 
" Poets' Corner," the most familiar spot in the whole Ab- 
bey, has thus received an illustrious addition to its peculiar 
glory. Separated from Dickens's grave by the statues of 
Shakespeare, Southey, and Thompson, and close by the door 
to " Poets' Corner," are the memorials of Ben Jojnson, Dr. 
Samuel Butler, Milton, Spenser, and Gray; while Chaucer, 
Dryden, Cowley, Mason, Shadwell, and Prior are hard b}^ 
and tell the bystander, with their wealth of great names, 
how 

" These poets near our princes sleep, 
And in one grave their mansion keep." 

The grave, by direction of the Dean, was left open as 
long as the Abbey was open yesterday ; and, as the news 
spread about London, many visitors went to " Poets' 
Corner" during the afternoon to take a last sad look at the 
coffin of Charles Dickens ; but it was understood that the 



S22 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

grave would be closed during the course of the evening, 
and that it was the intention of the Dean to preach a 
funeral sermon upon the career and character of the great 
writer, whose ashes have been laid in the Abbey, on Sunday 
next. 

In the first mourning coach were Mr. Cliarles Dickens, 
jim., Mr. Harry Dickens, Miss Dickens and Mrs. Charles 
Collins. 

In the second coach, Miss Hogarth, Mrs. Austen ("Mr. 
Dickens's sister), Mrs. Charles Dickens, Jan., and Mr. John 
Forster. 

In the third coach, Mr. Frank Beard, Mr. Charles Collins, 
Mr. Ouvry, Mr. Wilkie Collins, and Mr. Edmund Dickens. 

The grave was visited, during the short time it remained 
open, by thousands of persons of all ranks. Mr. John E. 
McDonough, of Philadelphia, who had arrived in London 
on the day after Mr. Dickens's death, was among the crowd 
which visited Poets' Corner on the afternoon of the inter- 
ment. *•! went there," he has told us, "with a friend. 
Part of the pavement had been removed, but the flags were 
to be immediately replaced. A slight barrier of cord or 
line was fenced all round the grave, which was filled with 
flowers — not bouquets, but single rosebuds and geraniums. 
On inquiry, I was told that ever}' person, male and female, 
who visited the grave that day, and wore a flower — an 
English habit which Mr. Dickens himself always favored — 
had thrown it, as if by some instinctive feeling, into the 
grave of the greatest author of our time. My friend and 
myself silently exchanged looks, and our flowers were 
reverently cast amid the heap already in the grave. It was 
a very solemn and imposing, and I might say, affecting 
scene." 

The Yery Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., who was 
appointed Dean of Westminster, in January, 1864, on the pro- 
motion of Dr. Trench to the Archbishopric of Dublin, and 
through whose influence with the family of Mr. Dickens, the 
remains of the great author were deposited in Poets' Corner, 
Westminster Abbey, is son of the late Bishop of Norwich, 



THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. 323 

was educated at Hugby School, by the celebrated Dr. Arnold, 
and obtained the highest honors, in Classics and Theology, 
daring his University course at Oxford. His life of Dr. 
Arnold, published in 1844, is considered a model biography, 
and he has published many other literary works, historical 
and religious. He is now fifty -five years old, is beloved and 
honored for his tolerance and talent, and, to the regret of the 
Church of England, has more than once refused a mitre. 
His sermon, "preached in Westminster Abbey, June 19th, 
18t0, (the First Sunday after Trinity,) being the Sunday 
following the funeral of Charles Dickens," was published by 
Macmillan & Co., London, with the intimation that 
" preached under the pressure of a temporary indisposition, 
which prevented it from being heard except by compara- 
tively few, it is printed at the request of some of those who 
have since desired to read it." The Dean's voice was so 
low, from illness, that Mr. McDonough heard only an 
occasional sentence. Exactly opposite the pulpit, and so 
iiear to it, as to be within ear-shot, sat Mr. Tennyson, the poet. 
A little to his left was Mr. Wilkie Collins, in feature, but 
not in bulk, very like the late Secretary Stanton. In the 
present volume this sermon is given in full, as a tribute of 
the highest value, from one well qualified to bestow it, to 
the moral character of the writings, the pure life, and the 
comprehensive Christianity, of Charles Dickens. 

THE FUNERAL SERMON. 

St. Luke xv. 3 ; xvi. 19-21. 

He spake this Parable 

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and 
fine linen, and fared sumjituously every day : 

And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at 
his gate, lull of sores, 

And desiring to be fed M'ith the crumbs which fell from the rich 
man's table : moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 

There are some passages of Scripture which, when they 
are read in the services of the Sunday, almost demand a 



324 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

special notice from their extraordinary force and impres- 
siveness. Such is the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, 
read as the Gospel of this day. There are some incidents 
of human life which almost demandjjf^a special notice from 
the depth and breadth of the feelings which they awaken in 
the heart of the congregation. Such was the ceremony 
which, on Tuesday last, conveyed to his grave, within these 
walls, a lamented and gifted being, who had for years de- 
lighted and instructed the generation to which he belonged. 
And if the Scripture of the day and the incident of the 
week direct our minds to the same thoughts, and mutually 
illustrate each other, the attraction is irresistible, and the 
moral which each supplies is doubly enforced. 

Let me then draw out these lessons in what I now pro- 
pose to say. 

I. I will speak first of the form of instruction which we 
are called upon to notice in the Gospel of this Sunday. It 
is not only like most of our Lord's instructions, a Parable, 
but it is, as it were, a Parable of the Parables. It is the 
last of a group which occurs in the 15th and 16th chapters 
of St. Luke, where the story is taken in each case, not as 
in the other Gospels, from inanimate or irrational creatures, 
but from the doings and characters of men. First comes 
the stor}^ of the Good Shepherd, with all its depth of tender- 
ness ; then the story of the Indefatigable Searcher, with all 
its depth of earnestness ; then the story of the Prodigal 
Son, with all its depth of pathos ; then the story of the Un- 
just Steward, with all its depth of satire ; and, last of 
all, comes the story of the Rich Man and the Poor Man, 
drawn not merely from the mountain side, or the dark cham- 
ber, or the tranquil home, or the accountant's closet, but 
from the varied stir of human enjoyment and human suffer- 
ing in the streets and alleys of Jerusalem, It is a tale of 
real life — so real that we can hardly believe that it is not 
history. Yet it is, nevertheless, a tale of pure fiction from 
first to last. Dives and Lazarus are as much imaginary- 
beings as Hamlet or as Shylock ; the scene of Abraham's 
bosom and of the rich man in Hades is drawn not from any- 
literal outward truth, or ancient sacred record, but from the 
popular Jewish conceptions current at the time. This Par- 
able is, in short, the most direct example which the Bible 
contains of the use, of the value of the sacredness of ficti- 
tious narrative. There are doubtless many other instances 
in the Sacred Records. There is the exquisite parable of the 



FUNERAL SERMON. 325 

Talking Trees in the Book of Judges ; there is the sublime 
drama of the Patriarch and his Friends in the Book of Job ; 
there is the touching and graceful picture of Jewish family 
life in the Book of Tobit, from which our Church selects 
some of its most striking precepts, and which, in its Hom- 
ilies, is treated as if inspired directly by the Holy Ghost. 
All these are instances where moral lessons are couve3'ed by 
the invention of characters which either never existed at all, 
or, if they existed, are made to converse in forms of speech 
entirely drawn from the inspired imagination of the sacred 
writer. But the highest sanction to this mode of instruction 
is that given us in this Parable b}^ our Lord Himself This, 
we are told, was His ordinary mode of teaching ; He stamped 
it with His peculiar mark. " Without a parable,"* without 
a fable, without an invented story of this kind. He rarely 
opened His lips. He, the Example of examples, the Teacher 
of teachers, "taught His disciplesf many things by para- 
bles." Through this parabolic form some of His gravest 
instructions have received a double life. If we were to 
ask for the most perfect exposition of the most perfect truth 
respecting God and man, which the world contains, it will 
be found not in a Discourse, or a Creed, or a Hymn, or 
even a Prayer, but in a Parable — a story — one of those which 
I have already cited — the Parable of the Prodigal Son. 

I have dwelt on this characteristic of the Gospel teaching 
because it is well that we should see how the Bible itself 
sanctions a mode of instruction which has been, in a special 
sense, God's gift to our own age. Doubtless His "grace is 
" manifold,"! — in the original expression, many colored. In 
various ages it has assumed various forms — tlie divine flame 
of poetry, the far-reaching gaze of science, the searching 
analysis of philosophy, the glorious page of history, the 
burning eloquence of speaker or preacher, the grave address 
of moralist or divine. These all we have had in ages past ; 
their memorials are around us here. These all we have in 
their measure, some more, some less, in the age in which we 
live. But it is j^erhaps not too much to say, that in no age 
of the world, and in no country of the world, has been de- 
veloped on so large a scale, and with such striking effects as 
in our own, the gift of " speaking in parables ;" the gift of 
addressing mankind through romance and novel and tale 
and fable. First and far above all others came that great- 

* Matt. xiii. 34. t Mark iv. 2. 1 1 P^t. iv. 10. 



826 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

est of all the masters of fiction — the glory of Scotland — 
whose romances refreshed and exalted our childhood as they 
still refresh and exalt our advancing years — as, would to 
God that they still might continue to refresh and exalt the 
childhood and the manhood of the coming generation. He 
rests not here. He rests beside his native Tweed. But 
long may his magic spell charm and purify the ages which 
3'et shall be ! Long may yonder monument of the Scottish 
Duke, whom he has immortalized in one of his noblest 
works, keep him forever in our memory, as, one by one, the 
lesser and later lights which have followed in that track 
where he led the wav, are gathered beneath its overshadow- 
ing marble. It is because one of those bright lights has 
now passed from amongst ns — one in whom this generation 
seemed to see the most vivid exemplification of this heaven- 
sent power of fiction, that I would thus speak of it, for a 
few moments, in its most general aspect. 

There was a truth — let us freely confess it — in the old 
Puritan feeling against an exaggerated enjoyment of ro- 
mances, as tending to relax the fibre of the moral character. 
That was a wholesome restraint which I remember in my 
childhood — which kept us from revelling in tales of fancy 
till the day's work was over, and thus impressed upon us 
that the reading of pleasant fictions was the holiday of life, 
and not its serious business. It is this very thing which, 
as it constitutes the danger of fictitious narratives, consti- 
tutes also their power. They approach us at times when 
we are indisposed to attend to anything else. The}'- fill up 
those odd moments of life which exercise, for good or evil, 
so wide an effect over the whole tenor of our course. Poetry 
ma3^ enkindle a loftier fire — the Drama may rivet the atten- 
tion more firmly — Science may open a wicler horizon — Phi- 
losophy may touch a deeper spring — but no works are so 
penetrating, so pervasive, none reach so many homes, and 
attract so many readers, as the romance of modern times. 
Those who read nothing else, read eagerly the exciting tale. 
Those whom sermons never reach, whom history fails to ar- 
rest, are reached and arrested by the fictitious characters, 
the stirring plot, of the successful novelist. It is this which 
makes a wicked novel more detestable than almost any 
other form of wicked words or deeds. It is this which gives 
even to a foolish or M^orthless novel a demoralizing force 
beyond its own contemptible demerits. It is this which 
makes a good novel — pure in style, elevating in thought, 



FUNERAL SERMON. 32Y 

true in sentiment — one of the best of boons to the Christian 
home and to the Christian state. 

6 vast responsibility to those who wield this mighty en- 
gine — mighty it may be, and has been, for corruption, for 
debasement, for defilement ; mighty also it ma}' be, mighty 
it certainly has been, in our English novels (to the glory of 
our country be it spoken), mighty for edification and for 
purification, for giving wholesome thoughts, high aspirations, 
soul-stirring recollections. Use these wonderful works 
of genius as not abusing them ; enjoy them as God's special 
gifts to us— only remember that the true Romance of Life 
is Life itself 

2. But this leads me to the further question of the special 
form which this power assumed in him whose loss the coun- 
try now de})lores with a grief so deep and genuine as to be 
itself a matter for serious reflection. What was there in 
him which called forth this wide-spread sympath}^ ? What is 
there in this sympathy and in that which created it, worthy 
of our religious thoughts on this daj^ ? 

I profess not here to sit in judgment on the whole charac- 
ter and career of this gifted writer. That must be left for 
posterity to fix in its proper niche amongst the worthies of 
English literature. 

Neither is this the place to speak at length of those lighter 
and more genial qualities, such as made his death, like that 
of one who rests beside him, almost "an eclipse of the 
" gaiety of nations." Let others tell elsewhere of the brilliant 
and delicate satire, the kindly wit, the keen and ubiquitous 
sense of the ludicrous and grotesque. " There is a time to 
'• laugh, and there is a time to weep." Laughter is itself a 
good, yet there are moments when we care not to indulge 
in it. It may even seem hereafter, as it has sometimes seemed 
to some of our age, that the nerves of the rising generation 
were, for the time at least, unduly relaxed by that inexhaust- 
ible outburst of a humorous temper, of a never-slumbering 
observation, in the long unceasing flood of drollery and 
merriment which, it may be, brought out the comic and 
trivial side of human life in too strong and startling a relief. 

But even thus, and even in this sacred place, it is good 
to remember that, in the writings of him who is gone, we 
have had the most convincing proof that it is possible to 
have moved old and j^oung to inextinguishable laughter 
without the use of a single expression which could defile 
the purest, or shock the most sensitive. Remember this, 



328 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

if there be any who think that you cannot be witty without 
being wicked — who think that in order to amuse the world 
and awaken the interest of hearers or readers, you must 
descend to filthy jests, and unclean suggestions, and deba- 
sing scenes. So may have thought some gifted novelists of 
former times ; but so thought not, so wrote not (to speak 
only of the departed) Walter Scott, or Jane Austen, or 
Elizabeth Gaskell, or William Thackeray : so thought not, 
and so wrote not, the genial and loving humorist whom we 
now mourn. However deep into the dregs of society his 
varied imagination led him in his writings to descend, it 
still breathed an untainted atmosphere. He was able to 
show us, by his own example, that even in dealing with the 
darkest scenes and the most degraded characters, genius 
could be clean, and mirth could be innocent. 

3. There is another point, yet more jDcculiar and special, 
on which we may safely dwell, even in the very house of 
God, even beside the freshly laid grave. In that long series 
of stirring tales, now for ever closed, there was a profoundly 
serious — nay, may we not say, a profoundly Christian and 
Evangelical truth, — of which we all need to be reminded, 
and of which he was, in his own way, the special teacher. 

It is the very same lesson which is represented to us in 
the Parable of this day. " There was a certain rich man, 
•'which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared 
" sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar 
*' named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and 
" desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich 
'•man's table. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his 
" sores." It is a picture whose every image is expressive, 
and whose every image awakens thoughts that live for ever. 
It is true that an Oriental atmosphere hangs around it — 
the Syrian purple, the fine linen of Egypt, the open ban- 
queting hall, the beggar in the gateway, the dogs prowling 
about the city. But the spirit of the Parable belongs to 
the West as well as to the East. The contrast, the ine- 
quality of deserts, on which it insists, meets us in the streets 
of London, no less than in the streets of Jerusalem ; and 
the moral which the Parable intends that we should draw 
from that contrast is the very same which in his own 
peculiar way is urged upon us, with irresistible force, 
throughout the writings of our lost preceptor. Close 
beside the magnificence, the opulence, the luxury of this 
great metropolis, is that very neighbor — those very neigh- 



FUNERAL SERMON. 329 

hors — whom the Parable describes. The Rich Man has no 
name in the Scripture ; but the Poor Man has a name in 
the Book of God, and he has a name given him, he has 
many names given him, in the tales in which the departed 
has described the homes and manners of our poor brethren. 
" Lazarus " — the '• help of God " — the noble name which 
tells us that God helps those who help themselves — is the 
ver}^ prototype of those outcasts, of those forlorn, strug- 
gling, human beings, whose characters are painted by him 
in such vivid colors that we shrink from speaking of them 
here, even as we should from speaking of persons yet alive 
— whose names are such familiar household words that, to 
mention them in a sacred place, seems almost like a dese- 
cration. It is of this vast outlying mass of unseen human 
suffering that we need constantl}- to be reminded. It is this 
contrast between things as they are in the sight of God, 
and things as they seem in the sight of man, that so easily 
escapes us all in our busy civilization. It is the difficulty 
of seeing this, of realizing this, which made a Parable like 
tliat of the Rich Man and Lazarus so vital a necessity for 
the world when it w^as first spoken. But He who spake as 
never man spake saw, with His far-seeing glance, into our 
complicated age as well as into His own. What was needed 
then is still more needed now ; and it is to meet this need 
that our dull and sluggish hearts want all the assistance 
which can be given by lively imagination, by keen sj^mpa- 
thy, by the dramatic power of making things which are not 
seen be as even though they were seen. Such were the gifts 
wielded with pre-eminent power by him who has passed 
away. 

It was the distinguishing glory of a famous Spanish saint, 
that she was *' the advocate of the absent." That is pre- 
cisel}^ the advocacy of the Divine Parable in the Gospels — 
the advocacy of these modern human Parables, which in 
their humble measure represent its spirit — the advocacy of 
the absent poor, of the neglected, of the weaker side, whom 
not seeing we are tempted to forget. It was a fine trait of 
a noble character of our ow^n times, that, though full of 
interests, intellectual, domestic, social, the distress of the 
poor of England, he used to say, '' pierced through his hap- 
" piness and haunted him day and night." It is because this 
susceptibility is so rare, so ditiicult to attain, that we ought 
doubl}^ to value those who have the e^^e to see, and the ear 
to hear, and the tongue to speak, and the pen to describe, 



330 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

those Tvho are not at hand to demand their own rights, to 
set forth their own wrongs, to portray their own sufferings. 
Such was he who lies yonder. B_y him that veil was rent 
asunder which parts the various classes of society. 
Through his genius the rich man, faring sumptuously every 
day, was made to see and feel the presence of the Lazarus 
at his gate. The unhappy inmates of the workhouse, the 
neglected children in the dens and caves of our great cities, 
the starved and ill-used boys in remote schools, far from the 
observation of men, felt that a new ray of sunshine was 
poured on their dark existence — a new interest awakened in 
their forlorn and desolate lot. It was because an unknown 
friend had pleaded their cause with a voice which rang 
through the palaces of the great, as well as through the 
cottages of the poor. It was because, as by a magician's 
wand, those gaunt figures and strange faces had been, it 
may be sometimes, in exaggerated forms, made to stand 
and speak before those who hardly dreamed of their exist- 
ence. 

Nor was it mere compassion that was thus evoked. As 
the same Parable which delineates the miseries of the out- 
cast Lazarus tells us also how, under that external degra- 
datiou, was nursed a spirit fit for converse with the noble- 
minded and the gentle-hearted in the bosom of the Father 
of the Faithful, — so tl\e same master-hand which drew the 
sorrows of the English poor, drew also the picture of the 
unselfish kindness, the courageous patience, the tender 
thoughtfulness, that lie concealed behind many a coarse 
exterior, in many a rough heart, in many a degraded home. 
When the little workhouse boy wins his way, pure and un- 
defiled, through the mass of wickedness in the midst of which 
he passes — when the little orphan girl brings thoughts of 
heaven into the hearts of all around her, and is as the very 
gift of God to the old man whose desolate life she cheers — 
when the little cripple not only blesses his father's needy 
home, but softens the rude stranger's hardened conscience 
■ — there is a lesson taught which touches every heart, which 
no human being can feel without being the better for it, 
which makes that grave seem to those who crowd around 
it as though it were the very grave of those little innocents 
whom he had thus created for our companionship, for our 
instruction, for our delight and solace. He labored to tell 
us all, in new, very new, words, the old, old story that there 
is even in the worst of capacity for goodness — a soul worth 



FUNERAL SERMON. 331 

redeeming, worth reclaiming, worth regenerating. He 
labored to tell the rich, the educated, how this better side 
was to be found and respected even in the most neglected 
Lazarus. He labored to tell the poor no less, to res[)ect 
this better part in themselves, to remember that they also 
have a call to be good and just, if they will but hear it. If 
by any such means he has brought rich and poor nearer 
together, and made Englishmen feel more nearly as one 
family, he will not assuredly have lived in vain, nor will 
his bones in vain have been laid in this home and hearth of 
the English nation. 

4. There is one more thought that this occasion sug- 
gests. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, 
besides the pungent, pathetic lessons of social life which 
it impresses upon us, is also conveyed, beyond any other 
part of the Gospels, the awful solemnity of the other 
world. ** If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
" will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
So also on this day there is impressed upon us a solemnity, 
before which the most livel\' sallies of wit, the most bril- 
liant splendors of genius wax faint and pale, namely, the 
solemnity of each man's individual responsibility, in each 
man's life and death. When on Tuesday last we stood by that 
open grave, in the still deep silence of the summer morning, 
in the midst of the vast, solitary space, broken only by that 
small band of thirteen mourners, it was impossible not to 
feel that there was something more sacred, more arresting 
than any earthly fane however bright, or than an}^ historic 
mausoleum however august — and that was the return of the 
individual human soul into the hands of its. Maker. 

As I sit not here in judgment on the exact place to be 
allotted in the roll of history to that departing glory, 
neither do I sit in judgment on that departing spirit. 
But there are some farewell thoughts which I would fain 
express. 

Many, many are the feet which have trodden and will 
tread the consecrated ground around that narrow grave ; 
many, many are the hearts which both in the Old and in 
the New World are drawn towards it, as towards the 
resting-place of a dear personal friend ; many are the 
flowers that have been strewed, many the tears shed, by the 
grateful affection of " the poor that cried, and the fatherless, 
" and those that had none to help them." May I speak to 
the :e a few sacred words which perhaps will come with a 



332 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

new meaning and a deeper force, because they come from 
the lips of a lost friend— because they are the most solemn 
utterance of lips now for ever closed in the grave. They 
are extracted from ''the will of Charles Dickens, dated 
" May 12, 1869," and they will be heard by most here present 
for the first time. After the emphatic injunctions respect- 
ing " the inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private 
'' manner " of his funeral, which were carried out to the very 
letter, he thus continues : " I direct that my name be in- 
'^ scribed in plain English letters on my tomb. . . I 
" conjure my friends on no account to make me the 
"subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial what- 
" ever. I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country 
" upon my published works, and to the remembrance of my 
'' friends upon their experience of me in addition thereto. I 
" commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord 
" and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and I exhort my dear chil- 
" dren humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching 
" of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no 
" faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here 
"or there." 

In that simple but sufficient faith he lived and died ; m 
that faith he bids you live and die. If any of you have 
learnt from his works the value, the eternal value of gene- 
rosity, purity, kindness, unselfishness, and have learnt to 
show these in your own hearts and lives, these are the best 
monuments, memorials, and testimonials of the friend 
whom you loved, and who loved, with a rare and touching 
love, his friends, his country, and his fellowmen :— monu- 
ments which he would not refuse, and which the humblest, 
the poorest, the youngest have it in their power to raise to 
his memory. 



PURITY OF HIS WRITINGS. 333 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PURITY OF HIS WRITINGS. — VARIETY OP SUBJECTS AND CHAR- 
ACTERS. — ABSENCE OF EGOTISM AND CYNICISM. — COMPARED 
WITH THACKERAY. — WILL HIS WRITINGS LIVE? — HIS DO- 
MESTIC LIFE. — HIS BROAD CHRISTIANITY. — THE CAIAPHAS 
OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH. — TRIBUTES FROM THE PULPIT. — 
CHARLES DICKENS'S LAST WORDS, AND THEIR GREAT LESSON. 

Believing that the world has been made brighter and 
better by the writings and life of Charles Dickens, I can 
have no hesitation in briefly delineating his character, as 
Author and as Man. In the whole range, vast as it is, 
which constitutes the common literature, the rich treasury, 
of America and England, not to speak of the numerous 
languages into which they have been translated, there are 
no purer books than those written by Charles Dickens. 
There is no line in them which the most scrupulous parent, 
the most tender husband, the most sensitive lover, the 
most fastidious guardian could desire to keep back from the 
eye of Maidenhood or Womanhood. There are no other 
works, in the language, so well adapted for all classes and 
all ages. They may be taken up, at any place or time, and 
the reader will be gratified by the entertainment they 
supply, the moral lesson which they teach : 

Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale 
Their infinite variety. 

No writer has more completely, or more successfully, ap- 
pealed to the emotional and sympathetic part of human 
nature. It is doubtful, as he glanced from gay to grave, 
whether his lively humor or his tender pathos was most 
to be admired. Whatever vein he indulged in, for 

21 



334 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the time, he avoided cynicism. Hence, we laugh loith, in- 
stead of at, his comic characters, taking Pickwick, and 
Sam Weller, and Wilkins Micawber, and Mr. Toots, and 
Dick Swiveller, and Captain Cuttle, (that truest of all 
rough gentlemen,) to our heart, and feeling all the better 
for having met, and known, and loved them. I do not 
intend to place Dickens by the side of Thackeray, because 
it is wearying work to try and discover unlike likenesses 
which do not exist, but would ask the reader to remember 
how differently he was impressed by the first works of both. 
Yanity Fair is a great work, which no man could have 
written, so severe is even its hilarity, unless he had been 
world-weary and hlase. The Pickwick Papers are the evi- 
dent production of a ver}^ young man, who, up to that time, 
had rather glanced at the world than moved in it. Yanity 
Fair was as palpably written by a person who had circulated 
freely through society, in various countries; who had been 
scathed in the passage ; and who poured out upon paper, 

The stinging of a heart the world had stung. 

Dickens was entering life, at the age of twenty-three, as 
he has told us, when he began to write Pickwick, and after 
the publication of a few sketches, had to draw mainly upon 
his imagination for the characters and the action of his stor}^ 
Before he had gone half way through it, a purpose filled his 
mind, and, what was begun as a burlesque upon Cockney 
sportsmen, struck a heavy blow at the then unbridled license 
of advocates in English Courts of law, and so thorouglily 
besieged that great citadel of Wrong and Oppression, the 
Fleet Prison, that, in a few 3^ears, it was "put down " (as 
Alderman Cute would have said) by public opinion, embodied 
in an Act of Parliament. Dickens lived to see imprison- 
ment for debt abolished in England, and to hear all men 
say, " You have done this." 

Thackeray, not much older than Dickens, had been a 
magazine-writer, a man of all work, for at least sixteen years 



WILL HIS WORKS LIVE? 335 

before the appearance of Vanity Fair. He had begun life 
as a gay "young man upon town," by burning the candle at 
both ends, at home and abroad, until his twent^^ thousand 
pounds was gone. Then he set to work, and, being highly 
educated and very talented, obtained a living and made repu- 
tation. Vanity Fair, which he produced at an age when 
Dickens had written his best things — or most of them — was 
very successful, as it deserved to be. Only a man of genius 
could have invented and sustained Beckey Sharpe. Had 
he written only that one story, Thackeray would have ranked 
as successor to the author of Tom Jones. Yet, admiring 
Yanity Fair as I do, and reading it enjoyably through, at 
least once a year, (paying the same compliment to Robinson 
Crusoe, Gil Bias, the Yicar of Wakefield, Ivanhoe, and the 
Caxton novels,) I close it with a lowered opinion of hitman 
nature. I also read Pickwick, every now and then, and 
though I do not find in it that thorough knowledge of "life" 
possessed by Thackeray, (its purchase-money being his 
glorious youth and the twenty thousand pounds, already 
named as his inheritance,) I find mj^self in good humor with 
" all the world and the rest of mankind." You read Dick- 
ens without, so to say, finding a bitter taste on the mind, 
after it. The flavor of the fusil oil is very strong on the 
mind, after reading Thackeray. Both writers, let me add, 
were genial, honorable, benevolent men, and warmly at- 
tached to each other. 

It is to be especially noted, as showing the idiosyncrasy 
of each author, that, whereas Mr. Thackeray was perpetu- 
ally bringing himself, in his books, before the reader, Mr. 
Dickens rarely alluded to himself, his experiences or 
oi:)inions, in any of his numerous works of fiction. 

Besides remarkable power and wonderful fertility of in- 
vention, Charles Dickens had a joyous temperament grafted 
upon a generous mind. When he wrote of the household 
virtues, of toleration, of practical charity, of fair humanity, 
his words had eflfect, for there was no " sham " in them. His 



836 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

kindliness of heart was almost as great as his genius. How 
remarkable and original that was, I need not point out. But 
genius without ballast has often been wrecked. In him, it 
was accompanied by skill, good sense, a well-balanced mind, 
and a strong purpose of doing good. His infinite variety 
equalled that of Shakespeare, and it is very possible that 
the readers of another century, now only thirty years dis- 
tant, may give Mr. Dickens a place even above that 
occupied by the Swan of Avon. The world is steadily 
becoming realistic, methinks, and bids fair to prefer the 
tales of Dickens to the plays of Shakespeare. 

It is universally known that his political opinions were 
strongly liberal. He was no mere partisan, however. At 
any time he pleased, during the last twenty-five years, 
Charles Dickens might have had a seat in the House of 
Commons. Any of the London boroughs would have been 
proud and glad if he had consented to be its representative. 
At least twenty other constituencies, throughout the British 
Islands, would have voted him their member by acclama- 
tion. Numerous offers to this efi'ect were made to him, and 
declined. He had resolved, at the beginning of his career, 
to devote himself to literature, wholly and solely, and, as 
the years rolled on, bringing him increase of power and 
influence upon the public mind, he believed, more than ever, 
that abuses were to be laid bare, wrongs righted, and 
reforms efiected, rather by his written than his spoken 
word^. In the House of Commons, with all his earnestness 
and eloquence, he would have been only one in a crowd — 
though most probably a distinguished one. From first to 
last, he relied on the Press, to work out all his public pur- 
poses, and was right in doing so. Besides, had he become 
a Member of Parliament, we should have had comparatively 
little from his pen. 

This brings me to the last point which I design to notice : 
Will Dickens live ? I would answer in the affirmative. 
Future ages will regard his writings as photographs of 



HIS CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE. 337 

middle and lower class life in England during the Victo- 
rian era, which had extended to thirty-four years when he 
died. In other novels of that period, aristocratic society is 
sketched, rather wearily ; but it may be safely assumed that 
after all, only a few, by Bulwer and Thackeray, will be read 
in the twentieth century, and these as rarely as the prose 
fictions of Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, and Goldsmith — 
the very writers who led Dickens, when a child, into the fair 
realm of romance — are read now. Dickens is so fresh, so 
kindly, so picturesque, so true, that his works must live, as 
Hogarth's do, pictures of the era which produced him. 

Dramatist, actor, orator, and thorough man of the world 
as he was, he realizes the idea of an universal genius more 
than any other writer who ever lived. In whatever profes- 
sion it might have pleased him to cast himself, he must have 
succeeded. Eminently social and domestic, he exercised a 
liberal hospitality, and though he lived well, as his means 
allowed, avoided excesses : — with a constant burthen of 
work upon his mind for five-and-thirty years, to say noth- 
ing of other occupations, it was impossible that he could 
have been what is called a free liver. It is said that he 
never lost a friend, that he never made an enemy. Of him 

it might be truly said 

He kept 
The whiteness of his soul, and so men o'er him wept. 

He was the life and soul of the domestic circle, and, in a 
preceding chapter, I have recorded, in a statement signed 
by himself, and endorsed by his wife and eldest son, that 
the resolution to have a divided household, came from her. 
True, she stood aloof from the husband of her youth, the 
father of her children, at the last sad hour, and she was not 
present when all that was mortal of him was deposited, with 
the remains of some of the greatest men of his nation, in 
the hallowed fane of Westminster : — but, let not her 
coldness, or carelessness, or anger, be imputed as his offence. 
There is yet one point, which I fain would have avoided. 



338 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

It has been insinuatefl and declared, by one or two " religi- 
ous" journalists and in two or three pulpits, that Mr. Dick- 
ens was not even a Christian. On Friday, June 10th, when 
Charles Dickens was only twenty-five hours dead, a person, 
whose status is that of a Deacon in Plymouth Church, 
Brooklyn, arose, at a meeting there, (I take the report of 
the N. Y. Tribune,) " and said that no man had ever written 
in the English language and gained as much popularity as 
Charles Dickens. But what troubled him was the question, 
Was Dickens a Christian man ? He could not make an an- 
swer." I am unable to see what justification, either in 
charity or religion, this Pharisee, or any other, had for 
putting a question which did not concern him. The 
Caiaphas of that Brooklyn Synagogue, instead of bidding 
his Deacon mind his own business, and look to his own 
soul, said, " Whether he [Mr. Dickens] was a Christian man 
in the experimental term God only knew." He added 
that, in his writings, Mr. Dickens had considerably 
patronized drink:— did he ever read the warning against 
it, in The Tale of Two Cities, in the example of Sydney 
Carton? Then, this modern Caiaphas said: "I recollect 
hearing my father say of Bishop Heber, after having read 
his life, that he doubted whether he was a Christian." 
Bishop Heber, the great poet-preacher, who wrote the 
famous Missionary Hymn, beginning " From Greenland's 
icy mountains," died in the service of God, in India. It 
would have been as well to have left him alone ; or, if 
it were thought necessary to "point a moral" from the 
dead, mention might have been made of the Rev. Lyman 
Beecher, D.D., who, as McClintock & Strong's Cyclopaedia 
, of Biblical Literature tells us, was charged by some of his 
brother CalvAnists with heresy, and brought to trial on that 
charge, in 1835. There are multitudes, too, who, seeing 
how^another member of this family has made Incest and 
Adultery, "familiar to the ear as household words," by a 
posthumous slander upon dead Lord Byron and his sister, 



IN HIS FAITH LIVE AND DIE. 339 

naturally entertain "great doubts" as to her Christian 
faith and character. 

While 1 write these lines, wondering at 

The rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the sun, 

I am presented with the announcement of a forthcoming Life 
of Christ, written by Charles Dickens for his own children, 
and used by him for teaching them the great lessons of 
Faith, Atonement and Redemption. I remember that he is 
denounced only by those who, in Swift's words, "have just 
enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make 
them love one another ;" that when in this country, in 1868, 
when he was asked what was his object in writing, he 
answered, "It is to show that all men may be saved ;" that, 
he was eulogized, as a good man and a Christian, by clergy- 
men of various persuasions in New York, Boston aud other 
American cities ; that, in England, where he was still better 
known, the same justice was rendered to him, the Dean 
of Westminster preaching his funeral sermon, and, on that 
same evening, in the same pulpit, the Bishop of Manchester, 
saying, " He preached — not in a church nor from a pulpit, 
but in a style and fashion of his own — a gospel, a cheery, 
joyous, gladsome message, wdiich the people understood, 
and b}^ which they could hardly help being bettered ; it was 
the gospel of kindliness, of brotherly love, of sympath}^ in 
the widest sense of the word, of humanity. I am sure I 
have felt in myself the healthful influence of his teaching. 
Possibly we might not have been able to subscribe to the 
same creed in relation to God, but I think we should have 
subscribed to the same creed in relation to man. He who 
has taught us our duty to our fellow-men better than we 
knew it before, who knew so well to weep with them that 
weep, and to rejoice with them that rejoice, who has shown, 
with all his knowledge of the dark corners of the earth, how 



340 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

much sunshine may rest upon the lowliest lot, who had such 
evident sympathy with suffering, such a love of innocence, 
such a natural instinct of purity, that there is not a page 
of the thousands he has written which might not be put into 
the hands of a little child, may be regarded by those who 
recognize the diversity of the gifts of the Spirit as a teacher 
sent from God. He would surely have been welcomed as a 
fellow-laborer in the common interests of humanity by him 
who asked the question, ' If a man love not his brother 
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
seen ?' " 

Lastly, I read the broad and hopeful words of his last 
will and testament, written within four weeks of his death : 

"I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and I exhort my dear 
children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching 
of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith 
in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or 
there." 

Musing on the broad principles of Christianity which, 
as with his dying breath, this great and good man so plainly 
laid down, I feel their truth and beauty, which Dean 
Stanley so deeply felt, when he told the congregation in 
Westminster Abbey, "In that simple but sufficient 

FAITH HE LIVED AND DIED; IN THAT FAITH HE BIDS YOU 
LIVE AND DIE." 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 
(Janus Weathercock,) The Poisoner. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

One of those pleasant winter evenings, when fires burn 
frosty blue, and hearts grow warmer as the weather grows 
colder. It is an evening soon after the ascent to the throne 
of his Most Gracious Majesty King George the Fourth. 

A pleasant, merrj^, and highly intellectual party are dining 
at the house of the publishers of that clever periodical, the 
London 3Iagazine, in Waterloo Place, to celebrate the new 
proprietorship. The cloth has been removed, the glasses 
sparkle in the light of the wax-candles, the wine glows ruby 
and topaz in the fast-revolving decanters, the oranges gleam 
golden, the crystalized fruits glitter with jewelled frost, the 
chestnuts, tight in their leather jackets, are hoarding their 
warm floury meal for the palates of poets and thinkers, 
puns are flashed in the air like fireworks, smart sayings are 
darting past like dragon-flies, even the gravest faces glow 
and brighten. A ring of brilliants the party resembles, for 
there is no one round the well-spread table but has a name 
in the world of letters or in the world of fashion. There is 
Charles Lamb, now busy with his Elia, the finest essays 
ever written — a little grave man in black, but with the face 
of a genius ; Hazlitt is glorying in a Titian, upon which he 
is expatiating ; Thomas Hood, with a face like that of an 
invalid Plato, is watching for a pun like a fly-fisher waiting 
for his cast. The Rev. H. Gary (the translator of Dante,) 
the mildest and gentlest of men, is explaining a passage of 
the Inferno to that fine, vigorous Scotch poet, Allan Cun- 
ningham the sculptor. Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), in 

(341) 



842 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

his own kind, cheery way, is defending a fine passage in 
Ben Jonson from the volatile flippancy of the art-critic and 
gay dilettante of the magazine, — to wit, Janus Weathercock, 
otherwise Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. 

lie is a fop and a dandy, but is clever, has a refined taste, 
and is the kindliest and most light-hearted creature in the 
world. He has run through one fortune, has been in some 
dragoon regiment, and no doubt distinguished himself 
against the French — if he ever met them. He is on the 
wrong side of thirty, and records his military career by that 
exquisitely blue undress military coat he wears, all braided 
and befrogged down the front. His cravat is tied to a 
nicety. His manner most gallant, insinuating, and winning. 
His face, however, is by no means that of the mere dandy. 
His head is massive, and widens at the back. His e3^es are 
deeply set in their orbits. His jaw is square and solid. He 
seldom looks the person he talks to full in the face. He has 
his hair curled every morning (a stray ringlet or so left 
free), and slightly stoops. His expression is at once re- 
pelling and fascinating. 

He is ubiquitous. Go to the Park, and you observe him 
in his phaeton, leaning out with his cream-colored gloves 
and his large turned-down wristbands conspicuous over the 
splashboard. Go to old Lady Fitzrattle's ball the same 
evening, and you will see the fascinating creature with the 
belle of the evening, gracefully revolving in the waltz. In 
the club library he is conspicuous ; at the supper-party he 
is the merriest and the gayest. He has fortunately left 
us portraits of himself both at the coffee-house and at 
home. 

Let us see the charming man at nine o'clock on a No- 
vember evening, 1822. The diners at George's Coff'ee-house, 
213 Strand, then the great resort of Kentish lawyers and 
men from the Temple, are all gone but three, — two ^^oung 
barristers in the last box but one from the fire, and next to 
them a fashionably dressed man with the exquisite cravat. 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 343 

the square jaw, and the deep-set eyes, that we at once recog- 
nize. George's was famous for its soups and wines, and 
Mr. Wainewright has dined hixuriously, A bottle of the 
rarest wine he has sipped away with supercilious pleasure. 
He now holds to the candle, in an affected manner, display- 
ing carefully his white jewelled fingers, a little glass of eau 
de vie de Dantzig, and is languidly watching the little flakes, 
or, as he would call them, "aureate particles," float and 
glimmer in the oily and glutinous fluid like scales of gold- 
fish. The voices in the next box catch his ear; he listens. 
The one Templar is reading to the other with unction an 
article by Janus Weathercock in the last London 31agazine. 
"Soothed into that desirable sort of self-satisfaction so 
necessary to the bodying out those deliciously voluptuous 
ideas perfumed with languor which occasionally swim and 
undulate like gauzy clouds over the brain of the most cold- 
blooded men, we put forth one hand to the folio which leant 
against a chair by the sofa-side, and at haphazard extracted 
thence Lancret's charming Repas : 

*A summer party in the greenwood shade, 
With wine prepared and cloth on herbage laid, 
And ladies' laughter coming through the air. ' 

Bimini. 

This completed the charm." 

The gay writer listens with half-turned head, gloating 
over every word, inhaling slowly the incense so delicious to 
his vanity, taking care, however, that the waiter is not look- 
ing. Again they are talking about it. 

First Voice: "How glowing! how exquisite 1 how re- 
cherche! how elegant ! how full of the true West-end man- 
ner I A fine mind that young fellow has. O, he'll do." 

Second Yoice : " Don't like it. Flashy assumption. Mere 
amateur stuff. By the by, when does that case of Badger 
versus Beaver come on, Jones? Isn't to-day the 15th?" 

"Low creature; debased nature," thinks Janus. " Upon 
my honor, these coffee-houses are getting mere haunts for 



344 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the inferior classes. The 15th, eh ? So it is. Why, that's 
the clay I promised to write my article for the London. I 
must be off to Turnham Green." 

Let us follow the delight of society to the White Horse, 
and take a seat beside him in the two-horse stage till it 
stops at the door of Linden House, Mr. Wainewright's 
elegant residence. His wife meets him at the door, and 
with her come dancing out, radiant with almost an exuber- 
ance of life, Phoebe and Madeleine, the two blooming 
daughters by a second husband of his wife's mother. They 
kiss him, they pet him, they load him with playful caresses, 
for he is their idol : they admire his genius, they love him 
as their nearest and dearest relation. Laughingly he frowns 
in assumed anger, and pleads the occupations of a popular 
author and a great critic. He breaks at last from their 
pretty siren wiles, and locks himself in his sanctum. It is 
a luxurious den. We can sketch it in almost Mr. Waine- 
wright's own coxcombical words. 

He strips off his smart tight-waisted befrogged coat, in 
which he so exquisitely masquerades as the retired officer 
of dragoons, and, in his own airy way, tosses on an easj'', 
flowered, rustling chintz dressing-gown, gay with pink rib- 
bons. He lights a new elegantly gilt French lamp, the ground 
glass globe of which is painted with gay flowers and gaudy 
butterflies. He then hauls forth languidly, as if the severity 
of the labor almost exhausted him, "portfolio No. 9," and 
nestles down into the cushioned corner of " a Grecian 
couch ;" stroking " our favorite tortoise-shell cat " into a 
sonorous purr. He next, by a tremendous effort, contriA^es 
to ring the bell by the fireside. A smiling " Yenetian- 
shaped " girl enters, and places on the table "a flask of as 
rich Montepulciano as ever voj^aged from fair Italy," then, 
after contemplating his elegant figure in a large glass, 
l)laced with a true artistic sense opposite the chimney mir- 
ror, with a fresh exertion he pours out " a full cut glass " 
of wine with one hand, and strokes the cat with the other. 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGIIT. 345 

Tlie sheet of glass returns sharp-cut photographs of a gay 
carpet, the pattern of which consists of garlands of flowers, 
a cast of the Yenus de Medicis, (for Mr. Wainewright is an 
artist,) a Tomkinson piano, some Louis Quinze novels and 
tales, bound in French " marroquin," with tabby silk linings, 
some pla^'ful volumes choicely covered by Rogers, Payne, 
and Charles Lewis, some azaleas teeming with crimson 
blossoms, standing on a white marble siab, and a large 
peaceful Newfoundland dog also. A fine Damascus sabre 
hong against the wall, (dragoons again,) an almost objection- 
able picture by Fuseli, that gay old bachelor at Somerset 
House, (a friend of the eminently popular and accomplished 
art-critic,) and last, but not least of all, the exquisite man 
of the world himself, full of heart, full of soul, and bathed 
in the Correggio light of the aforesaid elegantly gilt French 
lamp. 

At last the insufferable fop begins, and after one glance 
at the yellow ceiling, and one desultory smiling peep at 
some curious white crystals, probably filbert salt, in a 
secret drawer of his inlaid writing-desk, he pens the follow- 
ing sublime bit of euphuism, worthy, indeed, of the age of 
Keepsakes : 

"This completed the charm. We immersed a well- 
seasoned prime pen into our silver inkstand three times, 
shaking off the loose ink again lingeringly, while, holding 
the print fast in our left hand, we perused it with half-shut 
eyes, dallying awhile with our delight. Fast and faster 
came the tingling impetus, and this running like quicksilver 
from our sensorium to our pen, we gave the latter one con- 
clusive dip, after which we rapidly dashed off the following 
description couleur de rose." 

A little later this bright butterfly of fashion informs his 
enraptured world in the London Magazine that he has 
bought a new horse, and secured a new book : — 

"I have nothing more in the way of news, except that I 
have picked up a line copy of Bochius's Emblems, (you know 



846 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the charming things by Bonasone,) first edition ; Boulogne, 
1555. Capital condition, in blue French morocco, by De 
Kome, for whom I still retain some small inkling of affec- 
tion, in spite of the anathemas of the Rev. T. F. Dibdin. 
Also, a new horse, (Barbary sire and Arabian dam,) with 
whose education I occup^^ nearly all my mornings, though I 
have considerable doubts whether I shall push it beyond 
the military manege.''^ 

This exultino' e^'otism, this delight in bindings, is charac- 
teristic of the man, as also is the graceful allusion in the 
last line to the writer's military achievements, (disgracefully 
ignored by Napier.) 

Later in his career Wainewright fell foul of that wise 
thinker and profound critic, William Hazlitt, who also wrote 
for the London, laughing to scorn, "spitefully entreating," 
and hugely condemning his dramatic criticism. Hazlitt, the 
most inflammable of old bachelors, praised the Miss Den- 
netts' dancing ; Janus derided them as little unformed crea- 
tures, great favorites with "the Whitcchapel orders;" cried 
" Faugh !" when Hazlitt visited the Coburg and Surrey 
Theatres ; and sneered when his great rival praised Miss 
Valancy, " the bouncing Columbine at Astley's and them 
there places, — as his barber informs him." All this shows 
the vanity and shallow temerity, the vulgar and impertinent 
superciliousness of the pseudo critic. He got a bludgeon- 
blow on the head for it, however, from Hazlitt, who then left 
him to flutter his hour and to pass away in his folly. 

When Hazlitt left the London Magazine, about 1825, 
Janus Weathercock ceased to delight the world also, but 
he still rattled at parties, still drove in the Park, and 
flashed along the Row on his Arab horse " Contributor ;" 
he still bought well-bound books, pictures, and hot-house 
plants, and still expended his affections on his cat. Honest 
Charles Lamb, guileless as a child, lamented "kind, light- 
hearted Janus," the tasteful dand^^, the gay sentimentalist 
of the boudoir. Fine generous natures like Othello are 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 347 

prone to trust lago. One of those gentlemen who are mean 
enough to get their bread by professional literature, and yet 
affect to despise their business, Wainewright must have 
felt the loss of his liberal monthly salary, for he had expen- 
sive tastes, and a knack of getting- through money. 

Say some eight or ten years after the delightful dinner 
in Waterloo Place, this fine nature (true Sevres of the 
rarest cla}') was living in his own luxurious cosey way 
(books, wine, horses, pictures, statues, hot-house plants, 
Damascus sabre, tortoise-shell cat, elegantly gilt French 
lamp and all) at Linden House, Turnham Green, remark- 
able for its lime-trees, on the pretty heart-shaped leaves of 
which the ga}' artist probably lavished a thousand fancies. 
Only once had those rose-leaves fallen since the house and 
l^leasant grounds had belonged to Wainewright's uncle, a 
Dr. Griffith, a comfortable, well-to-do man, who had, for 
many years, edited a monthly publication. His death occur- 
red after a very short illness, and during a visit paid him 
by Mr. Wainewright and his wife, who was there confined 
of her first, and, as it proved, her only child. It was not 
exactly apoplexy, nor was it heart-disease ; but then even 
doctors are sometimes puzzled b}' organic complications. 
One thing is certain, it was mortal, and Dr. Griffiths died 
under proper medical care, and watched by the most affec- 
tionate of relatives. Wainewright gained some property 
by his uncle's death ; lamented him tearfully, and spent the 
money smilingly. Bills soon began, however, to be left un- 
paid, servants' wages were delayed, credit was occasionally 
refused, Turnham Green bakers and butchers dared to talk 
about Linden House, and people who "made much of them- 
selves, but did not do the right thing, not what yer may 
call the right thing." 

Things were not going altogether comfortable with a man 
who must have his wine, his cigars, his eau de vie de Dant- 
zig, all the new books and prints, and must dress *' in the 
style, you know." 



348 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

The fact must come out : Wainewright was a monster 
egotist, and not accustomed to starve either his tastes or 
bis appetites. He must have money for champagne and 
bread, Marc Antonio's prints and meat. As well be starved 
as have his cutlet without truffles. Poverty's iron walls 
were closing in upon him closer and closer, but he shrugged 
his shoulders, buttoned tighter his befrogged coat, pawned 
his rings, and got on well enough. 

Linden House must have been a peculiarly unhealthy 
place, for about this time Mrs. Abercrombie, Wainewright's 
wife's mother, died there also, after a very short illness, — 
something in the brain or heart, probably. Mrs. Aber- 
crombie had married a second time a meritorious officer, 
and left two daughters, Helen Frances Phcjebe and Made- 
leine, beautiful girls, just reaching womanhood. The poor 
orphans, having only ten pounds a year granted them by 
the Board of Ordnance for their father's services, (these 
must have been small indeed not to deserve more,) were in- 
vited to his pleasant, luxurious, but decidedly unhealthy 
house, by Mr. Wainewright, their step-sister's husband, in 
the most kind and generous manner, dear creature ! 

Helen Frances Phoebe Abercrombie, the eldest of the girls, 
attained the age of twenty-one on the 12th of March, 1830, a 
very short time after coming to Turnham Grreen, and within 
a few days of this event, the oddest caprice entered into 
Mr. Wainewright's mind. He proposed to insure her life 
to a very large amount for the short period of two or three 
years. Such an arrangement is, however, the commonest 
thing in the world with persons either permanently or tem- 
porarily embarrassed. Such insurances are often used as 
securities for bills of exchange or for loans, where the lender 
is especially cautious. There was nothing singular about 
it. It did not the least matter that Miss Abercrombie was 
almost penniless, and without expectations of any kind, 
except a trifling possibility under a settlement. 

One pleasant morning in March a trip to the city was 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINE WRIGHT. 349 

suggested as quite a divertisement, an agreeable opportu- 
jiity of ol:. serving- tlie hr.bits and customs of "those strange 
city people." Mr. Wainewright was jauntier and more 
degage than ever, in his tight fashionable befrogged coat, as 
he guided his wife and the beautiful girl, — bis temporary 
ward, — their ribbons fluttering brightly in the March wind, 
through the defiles and lab3^rinths of the busy cit}^ His 
whims and fancies about insurance offices were delightful in 
their careless gayety. It was quite an adventure for the 
ladies.. It was singular, though, that Mr. Wainewright, 
embarrassed as he was, should venture on a speculation 
that involved a large annual payment for interest, and yet 
seemed to promise no pecuniary return. It might be a 
chivalrous risk of some kind or other, the innocent and play- 
ful girl probably thought, and she would not care to inquire 
further into a business she did not profess to understand. 
It cost her nothing; she was only too glad to gratif}^ the 
whim of her kind kinsman, and to lend herself to his myste- 
rious, but, no doubt, well-planned and well-intended busi- 
ness arrangement. 

So, on the 28th, sixteen days after coming of age. Miss 
Abercrombie went to the Palladium Insurance Office with 
Mr. and Mrs. Wainewright, and insured her life for three 
thousand pounds for three j^ears. The object of the insur- 
ance was stated to be (whether correctly or not) to enable 
the young lady's friend to recover some property to which 
she was entitled. The life was pre-eminently good, and the 
proposal was accepted. On the 20th of April Mrs. Waine- 
wright and Miss Abercrombie went to the office to paj^ the 
first year's premium, and receive the policy. On or about 
the same day, a similar insurance for three thousand pounds, 
but this for two 3^ears only, was eflfected with the Eagle In- 
surance Office, and the premium for one year and the stamp 
duty duly paid by Miss Abercrombie in her young sister's 
presence. 

In the following October four more policies were efl'ected; 

22 



350 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

with the Provident for one thousand pounds, with the Hope 
for two thousand pounds, with the Imperial for three thou- 
sand pounds, and with the Pelican for the largest amount 
usually permitted, — namely, five thousand pounds, — each 
for the period of two years ; making altogether insurances 
to the amount of eighteen thousand pounds. The premiums 
paid, together with the stamps, amounted to more than two 
hundred and twenty pounds ; and yet, in case of Miss Aber- 
crombie living more than three years, all these payments 
would be lost. 

Lost they would be, who cculd doubt. The actuary at 
the Provident described her as " a remarkably healthy, 
cheerful, beautiful young woman, whose life was one of a 
thousand." Old secretaries, smiling over their spectacles, 
must have felt as if a sunbeam had glanced across the room, 
and have sighed to think that, if a full insurance had been 
effected, fifty years hence, that same Miss Abercrombie 
might enter the room still hearty and vigorous to pay her 
annual interest, when they were long ago gone, and their 
ver}^ tombstones were effaced by rain and wind. 

Still all this insuring was odd, too, for Mr. Wainewright 
was deeply in debt. Shabby truculent men behind grated 
doors in Cursitor street were speaking irreverently of him ; 
dirty Jew-faced men at the bar of the Hole-in-the-Wall in 
Chancery Lane discussed him and were eager to claw his 
shoulder. He spent more than ever, and earned less. His 
literary friends, Lamb and Reynolds, seldom saw him now. 
His artist friends, Fuseli the fiery and Stothard the gentle, 
Westall and Lawrence, seldom met him. A crisis was 
coming to the man with elegant tastes. In August he had 
given a warrant of attorney and a bill of sale of his furniture 
at Linden House ; both of these bad become absolute, and 
seizure was impending. " The Jew fellows" could only be 
scared away (from the elegant gilt lamp, the books, and 
prints) till the 20th or 21st of December. 

At some offices scruples, too, began to arise, which it was 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 351 

not found easy to silence. At the Imperial, it was sug- 
gested to Miss Abercrombie, by Mr. Ingall, the actuary, 
that, " as she only proposed to make the insurance for 
two years, he presumed it was to secure some property 
she would come into at the expiration of that time ;" 
to which Mrs. Wainewright replied — 

" Not exactly so ; it is to secure a sum of money to her 
sister, which she will be enabled to do by other means if 
she outlives that time; but I don't know much about her 
aftiiirs ; you had better speak to her about it." 

On which Miss Abercrombie said, " That is the case." 
By what means the ladies were induced to make these 
statements, can scarcel}' even be guessed. The sum of eigh- 
teen thousand pounds did not 3^et bound the limits of specu- 
lation, for, in the same month of October, a proposal to the 
Eagle to increase the insurance by the addition of two thou- 
sand pounds was made and declined ; and a proposal to the 
Globe for five thousand, and a proposal to the Alliance for 
some further sum, met a similar fate. At the office of the 
Globe, Miss Abercrombie, who, as usual, was accompanied 
by Mrs. Wainewright, being asked the object of the insur- 
ance, replied that " she scarcely knew ; but that she was de- 
sired to come there by her friends, who wished the insurance 
done." On being further pressed, she referred to Mrs. 
Wainewright, who said : " It is for some money matters 
that are to be arranged; but ladies don't know much about 
such things ;" and Miss Abercrombie answered a question 
whether she was insured in any other office, in the negative. 
At the Alliance, she was more severely tested by the con- 
siderate kindness of Mr. Hamilton, who, receiving the pro- 
posal, was not satisfied by her statement that a suit was 
depending in Chancery which would probably terminate in 
her favor, but that if she should die in the interim the prop- 
erty would go into another family, for which contingency 
she wished to provide. The young lady, a little irritated at 
the questions, said, rather sharply, " I supposed that what 



352 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

you had to inquire into was the state of my health, not the 
object of the insurance ;" on which Mr. Hamilton, with a 
thoughtful look, said — 

" A young lad3', just such as you are, miss, came to this 
very office two years ago to effect an insurance for a short 
time ; and it was the opinion of the company she came to her 
death by unfair means^ 

Poor Miss Abercrombie replied : " I am sure there is no 
one about me who could have any such object." 

Mr. Hamilton said, gravely, " Of course not ;" but added, 
" that he was not satisfied as to the object of the insurance ; 
and unless she stated in writing what it was, and the direc- 
tors approved it, the proposal could not be entertained." 
The ladies retired ; and the office heard no more of the pro- 
posal nor of Miss Abercrombie, till they heard she was 
dead, and that the payment of other policies on her life was 
resisted. 

Early in that month Wainewright left the house with the 
leaf-stripped trees, the very unhealthy house, and took 
furnished lodgings at Mr. Nicoll's, a tailor, in Conduit 
striiet, to which he was accompanied by his wife, his child, 
and those two beautiful, affectionate girls, his half-sisters, 
Phoebe and Madeleine Abercrombie. Books, sabre, elegant 
French lamp, portfolios, and desk with the mysterious 
little eccentric drawer with the especial salt for filberts. 

There was still a little more law business for Phoebe ; the 
artistic mind remarked one morning in his playful, delighted 
way, " Would the dear girl be kind enough to keep in 
profile for one moment ? Exquisite ! Yes, there was a 
will to be made to benefit dear Madeleine in case of any 
unforeseen circumstance." Phoebe no doubt carolled out a 
laugh, and expressed a horror " of those dusty old lawyers." 
On that same daj^ the 13th, Miss Abercrombie called on a 
solicitor named Lys, to whom she w^as a stranger, to attest 
the execution of a will she desired to make, as she was 
going abroad ; he complied, and she executed a will in 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 353 

favor of her sister Madeleine, making Mr. Wainewright its 
executor. On the 14th, having obtained a deed of assign- 
ment from the office of the Palladium, she called on another 
solicitor named Kirk, to whom she was also a stranger, to 
perfect for her an assignment of the policy of that office 
to Mr. Wainewright. This the solicitor did by writing in 
ink over words pencilled by Mr. Wainewright, and witness- 
ing his signature. 

That same evening (as a reward, perhaps) the two sisters 
went to the plaj^ as the}^ had done the evening before, ac- 
companying their kind relations, Mr. and Mrs. Wainewright. 
Whatever bailiffs may be watching the gay and volatile 
creature in the befrogged coat, he has no idea of stinting 
his amusements. Providence is hard on your delightful and 
fashionable men, who earn little and spend much. 

The play is delightful, the pathos pierces, the farce con- 
vulses the pleasant party of four. After the play they have 
an 03'Ster-supper, and Mr. Wainewright is gayer and 
wittier than ever. In the night, however, Miss Phcebe is 
taken ill, evidently having caught cold from walking home 
that long way from Drury Lane or Covent Garden two 
nights in the wet and wind. There is great regret in the 
house, and frequent kind inquiries at her door from Mr. 
Wainewright. She gets up to dinner, but in a day or two, 
the cold not lifting, Dr. Locock is sent for. Mrs. Waine- 
wright and Madeleine are with her constantly. Mr. Waine- 
wright, who is clever in these things, as in everything else, 
prescribes her a black draught before the doctor is sent for. 
The doctor is kind and sympathizing, thinks little of the 
slight derangement, and prescribes the simplest remedies. 
On the seventh day of her indisposition, Mr. Wainewright, 
impatient of the doctor's remedies, prescribes her a powder, 
which she took willingly in jelly. She was decidedly better, 
and was no longer wandering; she was so much better in fact, 
that Mr. Wainewright, great in spirits, and full of sentiment, 
sympathy, and artistic feeling, told his wife to put on her 



354 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

bonnet and come for a walk sketching, while dear Phoebe had 
some sleep. That was about twelve o'clock. At two, Phoe- 
be was taken violently ill with convulsions. She appeared 
in great agony, became delirous, and struggled violently. 

Dr. Locock, who had been previously consulted about 
insurance certificates, was instantlj^ sent for, and came. 
The fit had then subsided, but there was pressure on the 
brain. She said, " O doctor 1 I am dying. These are the 
pains of death. I feel I am. I am sure so." The doctor 
said, "You'll be better by and b}^" She cried, "My poor 
mother ! my poor mother !" Dr. Locock left, and she 
had a fit, and grasped the hand of one of the servants. 
When Dr. Locock left, she lay quiet, and said she thought 
she heard a little bo}^ coming along the room, and that he 
ought not to be there, and she burst into tears and 
convulsions. 

A servant who had lived twent}^ years with Dr. Griffiths, 
and had known Mr. WaiiK'V>a-ight since he was a child, in- 
stantly sent for Messrs. King and Nicholson, apothecaries. 
A Mr. Hanks came and saw Miss Abercrombie in the con- 
vulsion fit. She had said to Dr. Locock, " Doctor, I v/as 
gone to heaven, but j^ou have brought me back to earth." 
Hanks gave her some medicine while Dr. Locock was there. 
The convulsions got better, and the doctors went away. 
Soon after the}^ were gone, the convulsions came on again,, 
and at four o'clock she died. 

Who can paint the horror and agony of Mr. and Mrs. 
Wainewright when they returned and found the beautiful 
girl, with the exquisite profile, only a day or two ago so 
bright and full of life, so arch, so graceful, — dead. 

Dr. Locock, leaving the house in which he was now use- 
less, with a sad face and heart, met Mr. Wainewright re- 
turning gay and light-hearted, perhaps humming a fashion- 
able tune. He appeared much shocked and astonished at 
the sad news, and asked what was the cause of death. Dr. 
Locock replied, " Mischief in the brain,^^ and proposed to 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 355 

examine the head, to which Wainewright immediately as- 
sented. On the next day the skull was opened by Hanks, 
and they found what witness believed was a quite sufficient 
cause of death, — a considerable quantity of water on the 
lower part of the brain, pressing upon the upper part of 
the spinal marrow. Witness thought the effusion caused 
the convulsion, and thr^t the convulsion caused death. 
Oysters had often produced similar effects upon irritable 
constitutions. Wet feet had perhaps rendered the constitu- 
tion weak and susceptible. 

There was a further examination two days afterwards. 
The contents of the stomach were minutely examined. 
There was no appearance of anything sufficient to account 
for death, except water at the base of the brain. There were 
a few points in which the bloodvessels were much more in- 
jected with blood than usual, an appearance often seen in 
those who die suddenly. Violent vomiting would account 
for this. The doctors observed a few little specks on the 
coat of the stomach, but that was all. 

This distressing and sudden death changed matters, and 
gave a new and quite unexpected significancy to that mj's- 
terious insurance business. Eighteen thousand pounds now 
became payable to the elegant, needy, and somewhat des- 
perate man ; part of the money as executor for Phoebe ; two 
of the policies being assigned to himself, with a secret un- 
derstanding that they were for the benefit of Madeleine. 

Unchristian suspicions soon arose, degrading, as Mr. 
Wainewright remarked, only to those who entertained them. 
Exasperated by the loss which, by the dear girl's distress- 
ing death, they had incurred, all the insurance offices 
meanl}^ and criminally refused pa3maent. The crisis came, 
but Wainewright was too poor to stay and press his legal 
claims, and therefore stealthil}^ retired to the friendly as3'lum 
of France, where urbanity always reigns, and claret is de- 
lightfully cheap ; w^here the air is ever sunny, and meat is 
lean, but not dear. He there resided, gay as ever, for 
several years. 



356 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKENS. 

After mauy dela3''s, occasioned chiefly by proceedings in 
equity, the question of the validity of the policies was tried 
in the Court of Exchequer, before Lord Abinger, on the 29th 
of June, 1835, in an action by Mr. Wainewright, as the 
executor of Miss Abercrombie, on the imperial policy of 
three thousand pounds. Extraordinary as were the circum- 
stances under which the defence was made, it rested, says 
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, on a narrow basis, on the mere alle- 
gation that the insurance was not, as it professed to be, that 
of Miss Abercrombie for her own benefit, but the insurance 
of Mr. Wainewright, effected at his cost for some purpose of 
his own, and on the falsehood of representations she had been 
induced to make in reply to inquiries as to insurances in 
other offices. The cause of her death, if the insurance was 
really hers, was immaterial. 

Lord Abinger, always wishing to look at the pleasant side 
of things, refused to enter into the cause of death, and inti- 
mated that the defence had been injured by a darker 
suggestion. 

Sir William Follett appeared for the plaintiff, and the 
Attorney-General, Sir F. Pollock, and Mr. Thesiger for the 
defendant. The real plaintiff was not Mr. Wainewright, but 
Mr. Wheatley, a respectable bookseller, who had married the 
lister of the deceased. The jur}^ partaking of the judge's 
disinclination to attribute the most dreadful guilt to a plain- 
tiff on a nisi prius record, and perhaps scarcely perceiving- 
how they could discover for the imputed fraud an intelligi- 
ble motive without it, were unable to agree, and were dis- 
charged without giving a verdict. It was clear to every 
one there had been foul play. 

The cause was tried again, before the same judge, on the 
3d of December following, when the counsel for the defence, 
following the obvious inclination of the bench, avoided 
the fearful charge, and obtained a verdict for the office with- 
out hesitation, sanctioned by Lord Abinger's proffered ap- 
proval to the jury. In the meantime, says Mr. Serjeant 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINE WRIGHT. 351 

Talfourd, Mr. Wainewright, leaving his wife and child in 
London, had acquired the confidence and enjoyed the hospi- 
tality of the members of an English family residing in 
Boulogne. 

While he was thus associated, a proposal was made to the 
Pelican office to insure the life of his host for five thousand 
pounds : which, as the medical inquiries were satisfactorily 
answered, was accepted. The ofiQce, however, received onl}^ 
one premium, for the life survived the completion of the 
insurance only a few months : falling after a very short ill- 
ness, and, singularly enough, with S3^mptoms not unlike 
those of Dr. Griffiths, Mrs. Abercrombie, and poor Phoebe. 
The world is full of coincidences. 

And here we feel compelled to throw off" our mask, to turn 
suddenly on the delight of the boudoirs and salons of May 
Fair, and shaking him by the throat, proclaim him as a 
A POISONER, — one of the most ci'uel, subtle, and successful 
secret murderers since the time of the Borgias. It is now 
well known that he wore a ring in w^hich he always carried 
strychnine, crystals of the Indian nux vomica, half a grain 
of which blown into the throat of a rabbit kills it dead in two 
minutes ; a poison almost tasteless, difficult of discovery, 
and capable of almost infinite dilution. On the night the 
Norfolk gentleman in difficulties at Boulogne died, Waine- 
wright had insisted on making his friend's coflfee, and passed 
the poison into the sugar. The poisoner had succeeded 
before this in winning the affections of his friend's daughter, 
and gaining a supreme influence in the house. 

A friend of the writer's, at a visit to this Norfolk gentle- 
man's house in Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square, Lon- 
don, long before his murder, was arrested in mistake for 
Wainewright, who, at that very time, was serenading with a 
Spanish guitar in the garden of the square. He was even- 
tuall}^ seized opposite the house of his friend Van Hoist, a 
pupil of Fuseli's. 

Wainewright, obtaining the insurance, left Boulogne, and 



358 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

became a needy wanderer in France, but being brought ur- 
der the notice of the correctional police for passing under a 
feigned name, -was arrested. In his possession was found 
the vegetable poison called strychnine, a fact which, though 
unconnected with any specific charge, increased his liability 
to temporary restraint, and led to a six months' incarcera- 
tion in Paris. After his release he ventured to revisit Lon- 
don, when, in June, 1837, soon after his arrival, he was met 
in the street by Forester, the police-officer who had identified 
him in France, and was committed for trial for forgery. 

July 5th, 1837, (seven years after the death of Miss Aber- 
crombie,) Waiuewright, then forty-two years old, "a man 
of gentlemanly appearance, wearing moustachios," was tried 
at the Central Criminal Court for forging certain powers of 
attorne}^ to sell out two thousand two hundred and fiftjMiine 
pounds' worth of Bank Stock, which had been settled on him 
and his wife at their marriage. This was a capital offence 
at that time, but the Bank not wishing to shed blood, 
Waiuewright at first declared himself not guilty, but even- 
tually pleaded guilty, by advice of his lawyer, to two of the 
minor indictments out of the five, and was therefore only 
transported for life. 

The moment the chief insurance offices found that "Waiue- 
wright was under sentence of transportation for forgery, 
they determined to open negotiations with the villain, and 
get from him certain confessions necessarj' to their inter- 
ests : little doubting that he would make them "for a con- 
sideration." He made them readil}^ enough when he had 
struck his bargain. At this time he was confined in New- 
gate (modern prison discipline had not then found its way 
into that jail) in a cell with a brickla3'er and a sweep : in 
which polite company he Vv^as actually recognized, through 
a strange chance, by Mr. Procter and Mr. Macready, visit- 
ing the prison with the Conductor of this Journal. When 
the agent of the insurance offices had extracted from tlie 
ruffian all that he wanted to know, that gentleman said, in 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINE WRIGHT. 359 

conclusion : " It -would be quite useless, Mr. Wainewrio-ht 
to speak to you of humanity or tenderness, or laws human or 
Divine ; but does it not occur to you, after all, that, merely 
regarded as a speculation, crime is a bad one ? See where 
it ends. I talk to you in a shameful prison, and I talk to a 
degraded conTict." Wainewright returned, twirling his 
moustache : " Sir, you city men enter on your speculations, 
and take the chances of them. Some of jour speculations 
succeed, some fail. Mine happen to have failed*, yours hap- 
pen to have succeeded ; that is the difference, sir, between 
my visitor and me. But I'll tell j^ou one thing in which I 
have succeeded to the last. I have been determined througfh 
life to hold the position of a gentleman. I have always done 
so. I do so, still. It is the custom of this place that each 
of the inmates of a cell shall take his morning's turn of 
sweeping it out. I occupy a cell with a bricklayer and a 
sweep. But by G — they never offer me the broom !" 

On the same occasion, or on another similar occasion in 
the same place, being asked how he could find it in his heart 
to murder the trusting girl who had so confided in him, 
(meaning Miss Abercrombie,) he reflected for a moment, 
and then returned, with a cool laugh : " Upon mj' soul I 
don't know, — unless it was that her legs were too thick." 

A more insupportable scoundrel never troubled this earth. 
He had kept a diary. The insurance ofliees, by the masterly 
stroke of sending to a French inn where he had lived, pay- 
ing the bill he had left unpaid and demanding the effects he 
had left there, obtained possession of it. Description of 
this demoniacal document cannot be attempted, but it con- 
tained a kind of index to the details of his various crimes, 
set forth with a voluptuous cruelty and a loathesome exul- 
tation worthy of the diseased vanity of such a masterpiece 
of evil. 

In the meantime, says Mr. Talfourd, in his version of the 
affair, proceedings were taken on behalf of Miss Abercrom- 
bie's sister bj^ her husband, Mr. Wheatle}^, to render the 
insurances available for her benefit, which induced the 



360 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

prisoner to revengefully ofFer communications to tlie insur- 
ance offices which might defeat a purpose entirely foreign 
to his own, aud which he hoped might procure him, through 
their intercession, a mitigation of the more painful severities 
incident to his sentence. In this expectation he was mis- 
erably disappointed. For though, in pursuance of their 
promise, the directors of one of the offices made a commu- 
nication to the Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
ment, the result, instead of a mitigation, was an order to 
place him in irons, and to send him to his place of punish- 
ment in the Susan, a vessel about to conve}^ three hundred 
convicts. 

In Newgate the gay-hearted creature was sublime. He 
asserted himself as a poet, a philosopher, aud a martyr. 
He claimed for himself '* a soul whose nutriment is love, 
and its offspring art, music, divine song, and still holier 
philosophy." When writing even from the hold of the con- 
vict-ship to complain of his being placed in irons, he said: 
" The}'^ think me a desperado. Me ! the companion of poets, 
philosophers, artists, and musicians, a desperado! You will 
smile at this. No : I think 3^011 will feel for the man, 
educated and reared as a gentleman, now the mate of vulgar 
ruffians and country bumpkins." 

In 1842, the dandy convict was admitted as inpatient of 
the General Hospital in Hobart Town, where he remained 
some years. Whilst an inmate of the hospital he forwarded 
to the Governor, Sir Eardley E. Wilmot, the following 
memorial. It is too characteristic of the man not to be 
given. The gilt had all gone now. The Governor's minute 
on the memorial is very laconic, — ''A. T. L. (ticket-of-leave) 
would be contrary to Act of Farlt. T. L. refused. Zd class 
wages received? — E. E. W." 

"To His Excellency, Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Bart., 
Lieut.-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, &c., &c., 
" The humble petition of T. Griffiths Wainewright, pray- 
ing the indulgence of a ticket-of-ieave. 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 3G1 

" To palliate the boldness of this application he offers the 
statement ensuing : That seveii jeavs past he was arrested 
on a charge of forging and acting on a power of attorney 
to sell stock thirteen years previous. Of which (though 
looking for little credence) he avers his entire innocence. 
He admits a knowledge of the actual committer, gained 
though, some years after the fact. Such, however, were 
their relative positions, that to have disclosed it would have 
made him infamous where any human feeling is manifest. 
Nevertheless, by his counsel's direction, he entered the plea 
Not Guilty, to allow him to adduce the ' circonstance attenu- 
ante,^ viz., that the money (£5,200) appropriated was, with- 
out quibble, his own, derived from his parents. An hour 
before his appearing to plead he was trepanned (through the 
just but deluded Governor of Newgate) into withdrawing 
his plea, by a promise, in such case, of a punishment merely 
nominal. The same purporting to issue from y® Bank Far- 
lor, but in fact from the agents of certain Insurance Com- 
panies interested to a heav}^ amount (£16,000) in compass- 
ing his legal non-existence. He pleaded guilty — and was 
forthwith hurried, stunned with such ruthless perfidy, to 
the hulks at Portsmouth, and thence in five days aboard the 
Susan, sentenced to Life in a land (to him) a moral sepulchre. 
As a ground for your mercy he submits with great defer- 
ence his foregone condition of life during fortj^-three ^^ears of 
freedom. A descent, deduced, through family tradition and 
JEdniondson^s Heraldi-y, from a stock not the least honored 
in Cambria. Nurtured with all appliances of ease and com- 
fort, — schooled by his relative, the well-known philologer 
and bibliomaniac, Chas. Burney, D. D., brother to Mdme. 
D'Arblay, and the companion of Cooke. Lastly, such a 
modest competence as afforded the mental necessaries of 
Literature, Archceology, Music, and the Plastic Arts ; while 
his pen and brush introduced him to the notice and friend- 
ship of men whose fame is European. 

" The Catalogues of Somerset House Exhibitions, the 



362 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Literary Pocket- Book, indicate his earlier pursuits, and the 
MS. left behind in Paris attest at least his industry. Their 
titles imply the objects to which he has, to this date, directed 
all his energies : — *A Philosophical Theory of Design, as 
concerned with the Loftier Emotions, showing its deep 
action on Society, drawn from the Phidean- Greek and early 
Florentine Schools,' (the result of seventeen years' study,) 
illustrated with numerous plates, executed with conscien- 
tious accuracy, in one vol. atlas folio. 'An Esthetic and 
Psj^chological Treatise on the Beautiful ; or the Analogies 
of Imagination and Fancy, as exerted in Poesy, whether 
Yerse, Painting, Sculpture, Music, or Architecture ;' to form 
four vols, folio, with a profusion of engravings hy the first 
artists of Paris, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, and Wien. 'An 
Art-Novel,' in three vols., and a collection of ' Fantasie, 
Critical Sketches, &c., selected partly from Blackwood, the 
Foreign Review, and the London Magazine.^ All these were 
nearly ready for, one actually at press. Deign, your Ex- 
cellency ! to figure to 3'ourself my actual condition during 
seven years ; without friends, good name, (the breath of 
life) or art, (the fuel to it with me,) tormented at once by 
memory and ideas struggling for outward form and realiza- 
tion, barred up from increase of knowledge, and deprived of 
the exercise of profitable or even of decorous speech. Take 
pity, your Excellency I and grant me the power to shelter 
my eyes from Vice, in her most revolting and sordid phase, 
and my ears from a jargon of filth and blasphemy that 
w^ould outrage the c^'nism {sic) of Paiiiy himself. Perhaps 
this clinging to the lees of a vapid life may seem as ba^ic, 
luwianly, arguing rather a plebeian, than a liberal and 
gentle descent. But, your Excellency I the wretched Exile 
has a child ! — and Vanity (sprung from the praise of Flax- 
man, Charles Lamb, Stothard, Rd. Westall, Delaroche, Cor- 
nelius, Lawrence, and the god of his worship, Fuseli) 
whispers that the follower of the Ideal might even 3^et 
achieve another reputation than that of a Faussaire. Seven 



THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT. 363 

years of steady demeanor may in some degree promise that 
no indulgence shall ever be abused by your Excellency's 
miserable petitioner, 

''T. G. Wainewright." 



Discharged from the hospital, the elegant-mannered poi- 
soner, his dress with no style at all about it now, his spell- 
ing rather wandering, and his bearing less refined than it 
used to be, set up as an artist at Hobart Town, where 
sketches by him still exist. His conversation to lady-sitters 
was often indelicate. A writer in a Melbourne paper, 6th 
Jul}^ 1841, says of this dangerous and abandoned wretch 
(we must use plain words for him now): " He rarely looked 
you in the face. His conversation and manners were win- 
nhig in the extreme; he was never intemperate, but never- 
theless of grossl}' sensual habit, and an opium-eater. As 
to moral character, he was a man of the very lowest stamp. 
He seemed to be possessed by an ingrained malignity of 
disposition, which kept him constantly on the very confines 
of murder, and he took a perverse pleasure in traducing 
persons who had befriended him. There is a terrible story 
told of his savage malignity towards a fellow-patient in the 
hospital, a convict, against whom he bore a grudge. The 
man was in a state of collapse, — his extremities were already 
growing cold. Death had him by the throat. Wainewright's 
snakish eyes kindled with unearthly fire. He saw at once 
the fatal sign. He stole softly as a cat to the man's pallet, 
and hissed his exultation into his dying ear, — 

" ' You are a dead man, you. — In four-and-twenty hours 
3^our soul will be in hell, and my arms will be up to that 
(touching his elbow) in your body, dissecting you ' " 

Such was the ingrained and satanic wickedness of this 
triple murderer. Twice this delight of society attempted 
to poison people who had become obnoxious to him. Even 
ill that polluted corner of the world the man was dreaded, 
hated, and shunned. No chance homicide had imbrued his 



364 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

hands, but a subtle series of coTardl3^ and atrocious crimes. 
Kis sole friend and companion was a cat, for which he 
evinced an extraordinary and sentimental affection. lie 
had always been fond of cats. In 1852, this gentlemanly 
and specious monster was struck down in a moment, as with 
a thunderbolt, by apoplexy. He had survived his victims 
sixteen years. 

Perhaps no blacker fl al ever passed from a body than 
passed the day that Wainewright the poisoner went to his 
account. Well, says Mr. Serjeant Talfourd : 

" Surely no contrast presented in the wildest romance 
between a gay cavalier, fascinating Naples or Palermo, and 
the same hero detected as the bandit or demon of the forest, 
equals that which tim3 has unveiled between what Mr. 
Wainewright seemed and what he was." 

It is this monster whom Lord Lytton has immorialized 
in his powerful novel of Luv;retia. 



ABOARD SHIP. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

My journeys as Uncommerci^ i Traveller for the firm of 
Human Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last re- 
ported of them, but have kept me continually on the move. 
I remain in the same idle employment. I never solicit an 
order, I never get any commission, I am the rolling stone 
that gathers no moss, — unless any should by chance be 
found among these Samples. 

Some half a year ago, I found myself in my idlest, dream- 
iest and least accountable condition altogether, on board 
ship, in the harbor of the city of New York, in the United 
States of America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine was 
the good steamship Russia, Captain Cook, Cunard Line, 
bound for Liverpool. What more could I wish for ? 

I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My 
salad-days, when I was green of visage and sea-sick, being 
gone with better things (and worse,) no coming event cast 
its shadows before. 

I might, but a few moments previously, have imitated 
Sterne, and said, " ' And yet, methinks, Eugenius ' — laying 
my forefinger wistfully on his coat sleeve thus — ' and yet 
methinks, Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to part with thee, 
for what fresh fields .... my dear Eugenius .... can 
be fresher than thou art, and in what pastures new shall I 
find Eliza — or call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie,' " — I 
say I might have done this ; but Eugenius was gone, and I 
hadn't done it. 

I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watch- 
ing the working of the ship very slowly about, that she 
might head for England. It was high noon on a most bril- 

23 (365) 



366 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

liant day in April, and the beautiful bay was glorious and 
glowing. Full many a time, on shore there, had I seen the 
snow come down, down, down, (itself like down,) until it lay 
deep in all the ways of men, and particularly as it seemed in 
my way, for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for 
months. Within two or three days last past had I watched 
the feathery fall setting in with the ardor of a new idea, in- 
stead of dragging at the skirts of a worn-out winter, and 
permitting glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a bright 
sun and a clear sky had melted the snow in the great cruci- 
ble of nature, and it had been poured out again that morn- 
ing over sea and land, transformed into myriads of gold 
and silver sparkles. 

The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the 
old Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually passed 
into North America, where flowers are luxuriously grown 
and tastefully combined in the richest profusion ; but be 
that as it may, such gdi'geous farewells in flowers had come 
on board, that the small officer's cabin on deck, which I ten- 
anted, bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks 
of other flowers that it couldn't hold, made a garden of the 
unoccupied tables in the passenger's saloon. These deli- 
cious scents of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the 
sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one. 
And so, with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and with 
the screw below revolving at a mighty rate, and occasion- 
ally giving the ship an angry shake for resisting I fell into 
my idlest ways and lost myself 

As, for instance, whether it was I, lying there, or some 
other entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far 
too lazy to look into. What did it signify to me if it were I 
— or to the more mysterious entity — if it were he ? Equally 
as to the remembrances that drowsily floated by me, — or 
by him, — why ask when, or where, the things happened ? 
Was it not enough that they befell at some time, some- 
where ? 



ABOARD SHIP. 36t 

There was that assisting at the Church service on board 
another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps 
on the passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the 
ship's bells go, as like church-bells as they could ; pleasant 
to see the watch off duty mustered, and come in ; best hats, 
best Guernseys, washed hands and faces, smoothed heads. 
But then arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comical, 
that no check which the gravest intentions could put upon 
them would hold them in hand. Thus the scene. Some seventy 
passengers assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books 
on tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No minister. 
Rumor has related that a modest 3'oung clergyman on 
board has responded to the captain's request that he will 
officiate. Pause again, and very heavy rolling 

Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong 
stewards skate in, supporting minister between them. Gen- 
eral appearance as if somebody picked up, drunk and in- 
capable, and under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage, 
pause, and particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch 
their opportunity, and balance themselves, but cannot bal- 
ance minister ; who> struggling with a drooping head and 
a backward tendency, seems determined to return below, 
while they are as determined that he shall be got to the 
reading-desk in mid-saloon. Desk portable, sliding away 
down a long table, and aiming itself at the breasts of 
various members of the congregation. Here the double 
doors, which have been carefully closed by other stewards, 
fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly 
with Pale Ale designs: who, seeking friends, says "Joe!" 
Perceiving incongruity^ says *'*Hullo ! Beg yer pardon !" 
and tumbles out again. All this time the congregation 
have been breaking up into sects,— as the manner of con- 
gregations often is, — each sect sliding away by itself, and 
all pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the cor- 
ner. Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, 
and violent rolling. Stewards at length make a dash ; con- 



368 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

duct minister to the mast in the centre of the saloon, which 
he embraces with both arms ; skate out ; and leave him in 
that condition to arrange affairs with flock. 

There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship read 
the service. It was quiet and impressive, until he fell upon 
the dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment of 
striking up a hj^mn. After it was given out, we all arose, 
but everybody left it to somebody else to begin. Silence 
resulting, the officer (no singer himself) rather reproach- 
fully gave us the first line again, upon which a rosy pippin 
of an old gentleman, remarkable throughout the passage for 
his cheerful politeness, gave a little stamp with his boot, (as 
if he were leading off a country dance,) and blithely warbled 
us into a show of joining. At the end of the first verse we 
became, through these tactics, so much refreshed and en- 
couraged, that none of us, howsoever unmelodious, would 
submit to be left out of the second verse ; while as to the 
third we lifted up our voices in a sacred howl that left it 
doubtful whether we were the more boastful of the senti- 
ments we united in professing, or of professing them with 
a most discordant defiance of time and tune. 

" Lord bless us," thought I, when the fresh remem- 
brance of these things made me laugh heartily, alone in the 
dead water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I was 
wedged into my birth by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled 
out of it, " what errand was I then upon, and to what Abys- 
sinian point had public events then marched ? No matter 
as to me. And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage 
for a plaything (utterly confounding in its inscrutable un- 
reason) had not then lighted on a poor young savage boy, 
and a poor old screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by 
the hair of his princely head to ' inspect ' British volunteers, 
and hauled the second off by the hair of his equinnie tail to 
the Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us 
outside Bedlam !" 

So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking myself 



ABOARD SHIP. 369 

would I like to show the gi'og distribution in "the fiddle" 
at noon, to the Grand United Amalgamated Total Abstin- 
ence Society. Yes, I think I should. I think it would do 
them good to smell the rum, under the circumstances. 
Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the boatswain's 
mate, small tin can in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty 
consumers, the grown-up Brood of Giant Despair, in contra- 
distinction to the Band of youthful angel Hope. Some in 
boots, some in leggins, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in 
frocks, some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with 
sou'-wester hats, all with something rough and rugged round 
the throat ; all dripping salt water where* they stand ; all 
pelted by weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened 
by the sooty riggings. 

Each man's knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for 
dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled e^^e, 
watches the filling of the poisoned chalice, (truly but a very 
small tin mug, to be prosaic,) and tossing back his head, 
tosses the contents into himself, and passes the empty 
chalice and passes on, so the second man, with an anticipa- 
tory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or neck-kerchief, bides 
his turn, and drinks and hands, and passes on. In whom, 
and in each, as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly 
kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenl}^ awakened 
tendenc}^ to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even 
observe that the man in charge of the ship's lamps, who in 
right of his office has a double allowance of poisoned chalices, 
seems thereby vastly degraded, even though he empties the 
chalices into himself, one after the other, much as if he were 
delivering their contents at some absorbent establishment 
in which he had no personal interest. But vastly comforted 
I note them all to be, on deck presently, even to the circula- 
tion of a redder blood in their cold blue knuckles ; and when 
I look up at them lying out on the yards, and holding on 
for life among the beating sails, I cannot for my life see the 
justice of visiting on them — or on me — the drunken crimes 



370 LIFE OF CHAKLES DICKENS. 

of any number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of 
Assizes. 

Abetting myself in m}'" idle humor, I closed my eyes and 
recalled life on board of one of those mail packets, as I lay, 
part of that day, in the Bay of New York ! The regular 
life began — mine always did, for I never got to sleep after- 
wards — with the rigging of the pump while it was yet dark, 
and washing down of the decks. Any enormous giant 
at a prodigious hydropathic establishment, conscientiously 
undergoing the Water Cure in all its departments, and ex- 
tremely particular about cleaning his teeth, would make 
those noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, 
swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, 
rub. Then the day would break, and, descending from my 
berth by a graceful ladder composed of half-opened drawers 
beneath it, I would reopen my outer dead-light and m}^ inner 
sliding window, (closed by a watchman during the Water 
Cure,) and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-colored, 
white topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter 
morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the 
ship fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate. And now 
lying down again, awaiting the season for broiled ham and 
tea, I would be compelled to listen to the voice of conscience, 
— the Screw. 

It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of 
Stomach, but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. 
Because it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day long, 
endeavoring to stifle the Yoice. Because it was under 
everybody's pillow, everybody's plate, everybodj^'s camp- 
stool, everybody's book, everybody's occupation. Because, 
we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times, even- 
ing whist, and morning conversation on deck ; but it was 
always among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned 
in pea soup, not to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted 
by books, not to be knitted into any pattern, not to be 
walked away from. It was smoked in the weediest cigar, 



ABOARD SHIP. 371 

and drunk in fhe strongest cocktail ; it was conveyed on 
deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in their wrap- 
pers until the stars shone ; it waited at table with the 
stewards ; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was 
considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the Yoice 
of conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One squally 
day an amiable gentleman in love gave much offence to a 
surrounding circle, including the object of his attachment, 
by saying of it, after it had goaded him over two easy-chairs 
and a skylight, " Screw !" 

Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments, 
when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when 
there was " hot pot " in the bill of fare, or when an old dish 
we had had regularly every day was described in that official 
document by a new name, — under such excitements, one 
would almost believe it hushed. The ceremony of washing 
plates on deck, performed after every meal by a circle as of 
ringers of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep 
it down. Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting 
the twenty -four hours run, altering the ship's time by the 
meridian, casting the waste food overboard, and attracting 
the eager gulls that followed in our wake ; these events 
would suppress it for a while. But the instant any break 
or pause took place in any such diversion, the Yoice would 
be at it again, importuning us to the last extent. A newly 
married young pair, who walked the deck affectionately 
some twent}^ miles per day, would, in the full flush of their 
exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and stand trem- 
bling, but otherwise immovable, under its reproaches. 

When this terrible monitor was most severe with us was 
when the time approached for our retiring to our dens for 
the night. When the lighted candles in the saloon grew 
fewer and fewer. When the deserted glasses with spoons 
in them grew more and more numerous. When waifs of 
toasted cheese and strays of sardines fried in batter slid 
languidly to and fro in the table-racks. When the man 



872 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

who always read had shut up his book and blown out his 
candle. When the man who always talked had ceased from 
troubling. When the man who was always medically 
reported as going to have delirium tremens, had put it 
off till to-morrow. When the man who every night devoted 
himself to a midnight smoke on deck, two hours in length, 
and who every night was in bed within ten minutes after- 
wards, was buttoning himself up in his third coat for his 
hardy vigil. For then, as we fell off one by one, and enter- 
ing our several hatches, came into a peculiar atmosphere of 
bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice would shake us to 
the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa watch- 
ing the swinging candle forever trying and retrying to stand 
upon his head, or our coat upon its peg imitating us as we 
appeared in our gymnastic days b}^ sustaining itself horizon- 
tally from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and more 
facile towels ! Then would the Voice especially claim us 
for its prey, and rend us all to pieces. 

Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind rising, the 
Voice grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and 
under the pillow, under the sofa, and under the washing- 
stand, under the ship and under the sea, coming to arise 
from the foundations under the earth with every scoop of the 
great Atlantic, (and 0, why scoop so !) always the Voice 
Vain to deny its existence in the night season ; impossible 
to be hard of hearing ; Screw, Screw, Screw. Sometimes 
it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a whir, like a 
ferocious firework, — except that it never expends itself, but 
is always ready to go off again ; sometimes it seems to be 
aguish and shivers ; sometimes it seems to be terrified by 
its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to struggle, 
quiver, and for an instant stop. And now the ship sets in 
rolling, as onl}^ ships so fiercely screwed through time and 
space, day and night, fair weather and foul, can roll. 

Did she ever take a roll before like that last ? Did she 
ever take a roll before like this worse one that is comiuo: 



ABOARD SHIP. 8t3 

now ? Here is the partition at my ear down in the deep on 
the lee side. Are we ever coming up again together ? I think 
not ; the partition and I are. so long about it that I really 
do believe we have overdone it this time. Heavens, what a 
scoop I What a deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a 
long scoop ! Will it ever end, and can we bear the heavy 
mass of water we have taken on board, and which has let 
loose all the table furniture in the officers' mess, and has 
beaten open the door of the little passage between the 
purser and me, and is swashing about, even there and even 
here ? The purser snores reassuringly, and, the ship's 
bells striking, I hear the cheerful " All's well !" of the 
watch musically given back the length of the deck, as the 
latel}^ diving partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened 
by what we have gone through together) to force me out 
of bed and berth. 

"All's well!" Comforting to know, though surely all 
might be better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, 
and think of darting through such darkness with such 
velocity. Think of any other similar object coming in the 
opposite direction ! 

Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving 
bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring them 
into collision ? Thoughts, too, arise (the Voice never 
silent all the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf 
below; of the strange unfruitful mountain ranges and deep 
velleys over which we are passing ; of monstrous fish, mid- 
way ; of the ship's suddenly altering her course on her own 
account, and with a wild plunge settling down, and making 
that voj'age, with a crew of dead discoverers. Now, too, one 
recalls an almost universal tendency on the part of passen- 
gers to stumble at some time or other in the day, on the topic 
of a certain large steamer making this same run, which was 
lost at sea and never heard of more. Everybody has 
seemed under a spell, compelling approach to the threshold 
of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of 



874 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

never having been near it. The boatswain's whistle sounds ! 
A chano;e in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the watch 
very busy. Sails come crashing home overhead, ropes 
(that seem all knot) ditto ; every man engaged appears to 
have twenty feet, with twenty times the average amount of 
stamping power in each. Gradually the noise slackens, the 
hoarse cries die away, the boatswain's whistle softens into 
the soothing and contented notes, which rather reluc- 
tantly admit that the job is done for the time, and the Yoice 
sets in again. 

Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down hill, 
and swinging and swaying, until consciousness revives of 
atmospherical Windsor soap and bilge-water, and the Voice 
announces that the giant has come for the Water Cure 
again. 

Such were m}?- fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that 
day, in the Bay of New York ! Also, as we passed clear 
of the Narrows and got out to sea ; also, in man 3^ an idle 
hour at sea in sunny weather. At length the observations 
and computations showed that we should make the coast of 
Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on deck all night to-night, 
to see how we made the coast of Ireland, 

Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent. 
Great way on the ship, and double look-out kept. Vigilant 
captain on the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the 
port side, vigilant second officer standing by the quarter- 
master at the compass, vigilant third officer posted at the 
stern-rail with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet 
decks, but expectation everywhere nevertheless. The two 
men at the wheel, ver}^ steady, \ery serious, and very prompt 
to answer orders. An order issued sharply now and then, 
and echoed back ; otherwise, the night drags slowly, silently, 
and with no change. 

All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, 
a vague movement of relief from a long strain expresses it- 
self in all hands ; the third officer's lantern twinkles, and he 



ABOARD SHIP. 375 

fires a rocket, and another rocket. A sullen, solitary light 
is pointed out to me in the black sky yonder. A change is 
expected in the light, but none takes place. '' Give them two 
more rockets, Mr. Yigilant." Two more, and a blue light 
burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At last a little 
to3^ sky-rocket is flashed up from it, and, even as that small 
streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to 
Queenstown, Liverpool and London, and back again under 
the Ocean to America. 

Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going 
ashore at Queenstown, and up comes the Mail Agent in 
charge of the bags, and up come the men who are to carry 
the bags into the Mail Tender that will come off for them 
out of the harbor. Lamps and lanterns gleam here and 
there about the decks, and impeding bulks are knocked 
away with handspikes, and the port-side bulwark, barren bub 
a moment ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen, stew- 
ards, and engineers. 

The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be along- 
side, begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, between 
.us and the land, steams beautifully the Inman steamship. 
City of Paris, for New York, outward bound. We observe 
with complacency that the wind is dead against her (it being 
with us), and that she rolls and pitches. (The sickest pas- 
senger on board is the most delighted b}^ this circum- 
stance.) Time rushes by, as we rush on, and now we see 
the light in Queenstown Harbor, and now the lights of the 
Mail Tender coming out to us. What vagaries the Mail 
Tender performs on the way, in every point of the compass, 
especially in those where she has no business, and why she 
performs them, heaven only knows ! At length she is seen 
plunging within a cable's length of our port broadside, and 
is being roared at through our speaking-trumpets to do this 
thing, and not to do that,- and to stand by the other, as if she 
were a very demented Tender indeed. Then, we slackening 
amidst a deafening roar of steam, this much-abused Tender is 



3-76 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

made fast to us by hawsers, and the men in readiness carry 
the basfs aboard, and return for more, bendins; under their 
burdens, and looking just like the pasteboard figures of the 
Miller and his Men in the Theatre of our boyhood, and 
comporting themselves almost as unsteadily. All the while 
the unfortunate Tender plunges high and low, and is roared 
at. Then the Queenstown passengers are put on board of 
her, with infinite plunging and roaring, and the Tender gets 
heaved up on the sea to that surprising extent that she looks 
within an ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry. Roared 
at with contumely to the last, this wretched Tender is at 
length let go, with a final plunge of great ignominy, and 
falls spinning into our wake. 

The Voice of Conscience resumed its dominion as the day 
climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into 
port ; kept by us as we passed other light-houses and dan- 
gerous Islands off the coast, where some of the officers, with 
whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in sailing ships 
in fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to have 
quite an affectionate remembrance), and past the Welsh 
coast, and past the Cheshire coast, and past everything and 
everywhere lying between our ship and her own special dock 
in the Mersey. OflT which, at last, at nine of the clock on a 
fair evening early in May, we stopped, and the Yoice ceased. 
A very curious sensation, not unlike having my own ears 
stopped, ensued upon that silence ; and it was with a no less 
curious sensation that I went over the side of the good 
Canard ship Russia, (whom Prosperity attend through all 
her vo3^ages !) and surveyed the outer hull of the gracious 
monster that the Yoice had inhabited. So, perhaps, shall 
we all, in the spirit, one day survey the frame that held the 
busier Yoice from which my vagrant fancy derived this 
similitude. 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

I HAD been looking, yesternight, through the famous 
Dance of Death, and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose in 
my mind with the new significance of a ghastly monotony 
not to be found in the original. The weird skeleton rattled 
along the streets before me, and struck fiercely, but it was 
never at the pains of assuming a disguise. It played on no 
dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no 
plume, minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine- 
cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold. It was 
simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying its way 
along. 

The borders of Ratcliffe and Stepney, eastward of Lon- 
don, and giving on the impure river, were the scene of this 
uncompromising Dance of Death, upon a drizzling Novem- 
ber day. A squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of 
miserable houses to let out in single rooms. A wilderness 
of dirt, rags, and hunger. A mud-desert chiefly inhabited 
by a tribe from whom employment has departed, or to 
whom it comes but fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled 
mechanics in any wise. They are but laborers. Dock- 
laborers, water-side laborers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, 
such like hewers of wood and drawers of water. But they 
have come into existence, and they propagate their wretched 
race. 

One grizzly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed 
to play ofl" here. It had stuck Election Bills on the walls, 
which the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. 
It had even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on 
the shutters of one ruined house. It adjured the free and 



3V8 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

independent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote for 
Tbatman : not to plump, as they valued the state of parties 
and the national prosperity (both of great importance to 
them, I think I), but, by returning Thisman and Thatman, 
each naught without the other, to compound a glorious and 
immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is nowhere more 
cruelly ironical in the original monkish idea 1 

Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman 
and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party for 
staying the degeneracy, ph^^sical and moral, of many thou- 
sands (who shall say how many?) of the English race ; for 
devising employment useful to the community, for those 
who want but to work and live ; for equalizing rates, culti- 
vating waste lands, facilitating emigration, and above all 
things, saving and utilizing the oncoming generations, and 
thereby changing ever-growing national weakness into 
strength ; pondering in my mind, I say, these hopeful ex- 
ertions, I turned down a narrow street to look into a house 
or two. 

It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly 
all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took the 
first entry and knocked at a parlor door. Might I come in ? 
I might, if I plased, Sur. 

The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long 
strips of wood, about some wharf or barge, and they had 
just now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to 
make two iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and 
there were some potatoes in the other. The flare of the 
burning wood enabled me to see a table and a broken chair 
or so, and some old cheap crockery ornaments about the 
chimneypiece. It was not until I had spoken with the 
woman a few minutes that I saw a horrible brown heap on 
the floor in a corner, which, but for previous experience in 
this dismal w^ise, I might not have suspected to be " the 
bed." There was something thrown upon it, and I asked 
what that was. 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 3^9 

*' 'Tis the poor craythur that stays here, Sur, and 'tis very 
bad she is, and 'tis very bad she's been this long time, and 
'tis better she'll never be, and 'tis slape she does all day, 
and 'tis wake she does all night, and 'tis the lead, Sur." 

"The what?" 

" The lead, Sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills, where the 
women gets took on at eighteen pence a day, Sur, when 
they makes applicaytion early enough and is lucky and 
wanted, and 'tis lead-poisoned she is, Sur, and some of them 
gits lead-poisoned soon and some of them gits lead-poisoned 
later, and some but not many niver, and 'tis all according 
to the constitooshun, Sur, and some constitooshuns is strong 
and some is weak, and her constitooshun is lead-poisoned 
bad as can be Sur, and her brain is coming out at her ear, 
and it hurts her dreadful, and that's what it is and niver no 
more and niver no less, Sur." 

The sick 3^oung woman moaning here, the speaker bent 
over her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open 
the back door to let in the daylight upon it from the 
smallest and most miserable back-yard I ever saw. 

" That's what cooms from her, Sur, being lead-pisoned, 
and it cooms from her night and day the poor sick craytur, 
and the pain of it is dreadful, and God he knows that my 
husband has walked the sthreets these four days being a 
laborer and is walking them now and is ready to work and 
no work for him and no fire and no food but the bit in the 
pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight, God be 
good to us, and it is poor we are and dark it is and could it 
is indeed !" 

Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for 
my self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give 
nothing in the course of these visits. I did this to try the peo- 
ple. I may state at once that my closest observation could 
not detect any indication whatever of an expectation that 
I would give money ; they were grateful to be talked to 
about their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly a 



380 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

comfort to them; but they neither asked for money in any 
case, nor showed the least trace of surprise or disappoint- 
ment or resentment at my giving none. 

The woman's married daughter had by this time come 
down from her room on the floor above, to join in the con- 
versation. She herself had been to the lead-mills very 
early that morning to be '' took on," but had not succeeded. 
She had four children, and her husband, also a water-side 
laborer and then out seeking work, seemed in no better 
case as to finding it, than her father. She was English 
and by nature of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in her 
poor dress and in her mother's there was an effort to keep 
up some appearance of neatness. She knew all about the 
sufferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead- 
poisoning, and how the s3^mptoms came on, and how they 
grew, — having often seen them. The very smell when you 
stood inside the door of the works was enough to knock 
you down, she said, yet she was going back again to get 
" took on." What could she do ? Better be ulcerated and 
paralyzed for eighteen pence a day, while it lasted, than see 
the children starve. 

A dark and squallid cupboard in this room, touching the 
back door and all manner of offence, had been for some 
time the sleeping-place of the sick young woman. But the 
nights being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets 
" gone to the leaving shop," she lay all night where she lay 
all day, and was lying then. The woman of the room, her 
husband, this most miserable patient, and two others, lay on 
the one brown heap together for warmth. 

"God bless you, sir, and thank you !" were the parting 
words from these people, — gratefully spoken too,— with 
which I left this place. 

Some streets away, I tapped at another parlor door on 
another ground-floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, 
and four children, sitting at a washing stool by way of table, 
at their dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves. There was 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 381 

a very scanty cinclerous fire in the grate by which they sat, 
and there was a tent bedstead in the room with a bed upon 
it and a coverlet. The man did not rise when I went in, 
nor during my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my 
pulling off my hat, and in answer to my inquirj^ whether I 
.might ask him a question or two, said " Certainly." There 
being a window at each end of this room back and front, it 
might have been ventilated ; but it was shut up tight, to 
keep the cold out and was very sickening. 

The wife, an intelligent quick woman, rose and stood at 
her husband's elbow, and he glanced up at her as if for help. 
It soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He was a slow 
simple fellow of about thirty. 
" What was he by trade ?" 

" Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John ?" 
" I am a boiler-maker ;" looking about him with an ex- 
ceedingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccount- 
ably vanished. 

" He ain't a mechanic, you understand, sir," the wife put 
in, "he's only a laborer." 
"Are you in work ?" 

He looked up at his wife again. " Gentleman says are 
you in work, John?" 

" In work !" cried this forlorn boiler-maker, staring aghast 
at his wife, and then working his vision's way very slowly 
round to me ; " Lord, no !" 

" Ah ! He ain't indeed !" said the poor woman, shaking 
her head, as she looked at the four children in succession, 
and then at him. 

"Work I" said the boiler-maker, still seeking that evapo- 
rated boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and 
then in the features of his second son at his knee, " I wish I 
was in work ! I haven't had more than a day's work to do 
these three weeks." 

" How have you lived ?" 

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the 

24 



3S2 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

wonld-be boiler-maker, as lie stretched out the short sleeve 
of his threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her 
out, " On the work of the wife." 

I forgot where boiler-making had gone to, or where he 
supposed it had gone to ; but he added some resigned in- 
formation on that head, coupled with an expression of his 
belief that it was never coming back. 

The chcer}^ helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable 
She did slop-work ; made pea-jackets. She produced the 
pea-jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed — 
the only piece of furniture in the room on which to spread 
it. She showed how much of it she made, and how much 
was afterward finished oft by the machine. According to her 
calculation at the monient, deducting what her trimming 
cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence halfpenny, 
and she could make one in something less than two days. 

But, you see, it couie to her through two hands, and of 
course it didn't come through the second hand for nothing. 
Why did it come through the second hand at all? Why, 
this way. The second hand took the risk of the given-out 
work, you see. If she had money enough to pay the se- 
curity deposit — call it two pounds — he could get the work 
from the first hand, and so the second would not have to be 
deducted for. But, having no money at all, the second hand 
came in and took its profit, and so the whole worked down 
to tenpence halfpenny. Having explained all this with 
great intelligence, even with some little pride, and without 
a whine or murmur, she folded her work again, sat down by 
her husband's side at the washing-stool, and resumed her 
dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on the bare 
board, with its old gallipots for cups, and what not other 
sordid makeshifts ; shabby as the woman was in dress, and 
toning down toward the Bosjesman color, with want of nu- 
triment and washing, there was positively a dignity in her, 
as the family anchor just holding the poor shipwrecked 
boiler-maker's bark. When I left the room, the boiler- 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 333 

maker's e3"es were slowly turned towards her, as if his last 
hope of ever seeing again that vanished boiler lay in her di- 
rection. 

These people had never applied for parish relief but once; 
and that was when the husband met with a disabling acci- 
dent at his work. 

Not many doors from here, I went into a room on the first 
floor. The woman apologized for its being in " an untidy 
mess." The day was Saturda}^ and she was boiling the 
children's clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There was 
nothing else into which she could have put them. There 
was no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. There was 
an old gallipot or two, and there was a broken bottle or so, 
and there were some broken boxes for seats. The last small 
scraping of coals left was raked together in a corner of the 
floor. There were some rags in an open cupboard, also on 
the floor. In a corner of the room was a crazy old French 
bedstead, with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged 
pilot jacket, and rough oilskin fantail hat. The room was 
perfectly black. It was difficult to believe, at first, that it 
was not purposely colored black, the walls were so be- 
grimed. 

As I stood opposite the woman boiling the children's 
clothes, — she had not even a piece of soap to wash them 
with, — and apologizing for her occupation, I could take in 
all these things without appearing to notice them, and could 
even correct my inventory. I had missed, at the first 
glance, some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty 
safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of 
the door by which I had entered, and certain fragments of 
rusty iron scattered on the floor, which looked like broken 
tools and a piece of stove-pipe. A child stood looking on. 
On the box nearest to the fire sat two younger children ; 
one a delicate and pretty little creature whom the other 
sometimes kissed. 

This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was 



384 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, 
and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre 
of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely back 
to the old days of the Adelphia Theatre, London, when 
^irs Fitzwilliam was the friend of Yictorine. 

"May I ask you what your husband is ?" 

" He's a coal-porter, sir," — with a glance and a sigh to- 
wards the bed. 

" Is he out of work ?'' 

" yes, sir, and work's at all times ver}'-, very scanty 
with him, and now he's laid up." 

" It's my legs," said the man upon the bed. " I'll unroll 
'em." And immediately began. 

" Have you any older children ?" 

" I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have 
a son that does what he can. She's at her work now, and 
he's trying for work." 

" Do they live here ?" 

" They sleep here. They can't afford to pay more rent, 
and so they come here at night. The rent is very hard 
upon us. It's rose upon us too, now, — sixpence a week, — 
on account of these new changes in the law, about the rates, 
We are a week behind ; the landlord's been shaking and 
rattling at that door frightful ; he says he'll turn us out. I 
don't know what's to come of it." 

The man upon the bed ruefully interposed : " Here's my 
legs. The skin's broke, besides the swelling. I have had 
a many kicks, working, one way and another." 

He looked at his legs (which were much discolored and 
misshapen) for awhile, and then appearing to remember 
that they were not popular with his family, rolled them up 
again, as if they were something in the nature of maps or 
plans that were not wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly 
down on his back once more with his fantail hat over his 
face, and stirred not. 

" Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cup- 
board?" 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 385 

"Yes," replied the woman. 

" With the children ?" 

"Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have 
little to cover us." 

" Have 3^011 nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread 
I see there ?" 

" Nothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our 
breakfast, with water. I don't know what's to come of it." 

" Have you no prospect of improvement ?" 

" If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he'll bring it 
home. Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and 
may be able to do something towards the rent. If not, I 
don't know what's to come of it." 

" This is a sad state of things." 

" Yes, sir, it's a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs 
as you go, sir — they're broken — and good day, sir !" 

These people had a moral dread of entering the work- 
house, and received no out-of-door relief 

In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very 
decent woman with five children, — the last, a baby, and she 
herself a patient of the parish doctor, — to whom, her hus- 
band being in the hospital, the Union allowed for the sup- 
port of herself and family, four shillings a week and five 
loaves. I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman, 
M.P., and the public blessing Party, lay their heads to- 
gether in course of time, and come to an equalization of 
Rating, she may go down the Dance of Death to the tune 
of sixpence more. 

I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I 
could not bear the contemplation of the children. Such 
heart as I had summoned to sustain me against the miseries 
of adults failed me when I looked at the children. I saw 
how young they were, how hungr}'-, how serious and still 
I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs. I could 
think of them dead without anguish ; but to think of them 
so suffering and so dying quite unmanned me. 



386 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Down by the river's bank in Katcliffe, I was turning up- 
ward by a side street, therefore, to regain the railway, when 
my eyes rested on the inscription across the road, "East 
London Children's Hospital." I could scarcely have seen 
an inscription better suited to my frame of mind, and I 
went across and went straight in. 

I found the Children's Hospital established in an old sail- 
loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the sim- 
plest means. There were trap-doors in the floors where 
goods had been hoisted up and down ; heavy feet and 
heavy weights had started every knot in the well-trodden 
plauking ; inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward 
staircases perplexed my passage through the wards. But I 
found it airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven-and-thirty beds 
I saw but little beauty, for starvation in the second or third 
generation takes a pinched look; but I saw the sufferings 
both of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged ; I heard 
the little patients answering to pet playful names, the light 
touch of a delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms 
for me to pity ; and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, 
twined themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. 

One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael's 
angels. The tiny head was bandaged for water on the brain, 
and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and made 
from time to time a plaintive, though not impatient or com- 
plaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks and 
of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine 
beauty, and the large bright eyes were most lovel3^ It 
happened, as 1 stopped at the foot of the bed, that these 
e^'es rested upon mine with that wistful expression of won- 
dering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very 
little children. They remained fixed on mine, and never 
turned from me while I stood there. When the utterance 
of that plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still 
remained unchanged. I felt as though the child implored 
me to tell the story of the little hospital in which it was 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. SST 

sheltered to any gentle heart I could address. Laying my 
world-worn hand upon the little unmarked clasped hand at 
the chin, I gave it a silent promise that I would do so. 

A gentleman and lad}^, a young husband and wife, have 
bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, 
and have quietlj' settled themselves in it as its medical offi- 
cers and directors. Both have had considerable practical 
experience of medicine and surgery ; he, as house-surgeon 
of a great London Hospital ; she, as a very earnest student, 
tested by severe examination, and also as a nurse of the sick 
poor during the prevalence of cholera. 

With every qualification to lure them away, with youth 
and accomplishments and tastes and babits that can have 
no response in any breast near them, close begirt by every 
repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a neighbor- 
hood, there they dwell. They live in the hospital itself, and 
their rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at their dinner- 
table, the}^ could hear the cry of one of the children in pain. 
The lady's piano, drawing-materials, books, and other such 
evidences of refinement, are as much a part of the rough 
I^lace as the iron bedsteads of the little patients. They are 
put to shifts for room, like passengers on board ship. The 
dispenser of medicines (attracted to them, not by self-interest, 
but b}' their own magnetism and tb.at of their cause sleeps 
in a recess in the dining-room, and has his washing appa- 
ratus in the sideboard. 

Their contented manner of making the best of the things 
around them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their 
usefuhiess ! Their pride in this partition that we put up 
ourselves, or in that partition that we took down, or in that 
other partition that we moved, or in the stove that was 
given us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion 
of the little consulting-room into a smoking-room. Their 
admiration of the situation, if we could only get rid of its 
one objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the back ! '' Our 
hospital carriage, presented by a frieud, and very useful." 



388 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

That was my presentation to a perambulator, for which a 
coach-house had been discovered in a corner down stairs, 
just large enough to hold it. Colored prints, in all stages 
of preparation for being added to those already decorating 
the wards, were plentiful ; a charming wooden phenomenon 
of a bird, with an impossible top-knot, who ducked his head 
when you set a counter weight going, had been inaugurated 
as a public statue that very morning ; and trotting about 
among the beds, on familiar terms with all th€ patients, was 
a comical mongrel dog, called Poodles. This comical dog, 
(quite a tonic in himself) was found characteristically 
starving at the door of the Institution, and was taken in 
and fed, and has lived here ever since. An admirer of his 
mental endowments has presented him with a collar bearing 
the legend, " Judge not Poodles by external appearances." 
He was merrily wagging his tail on a boy's pillow when he 
made this modest appeal to me. 

When this Hospital was first opened, in January of the 
present year, the people could not possibly conceive but 
that somebody paid for the services rendered there ; and 
were disposed to claim them as a right, and to find fault if 
out of temper. They soon came to understand the case 
better, and have much increased in gratitude. The mothers 
of the patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting 
rules ; the fathers often on Sunda} s. There is an unreason- 
able (but still, I think, a touciiing and intelligible) tendency 
in the parents to take a child awa_y to its wretched home 
if on the point of death. One boj^ who had been thus car- 
ried off" on a rainy night, when in a violent state of inflam- 
mation, and who had been afterwards brought back, had 
been recovered with exceeding difficulty ; bat he was a J0II3'' 
boy, with a specially strong interest in his dinner when I 
saw him. 

InsuflScient food and unwholesome living are the main 
causes of disease among these small patients. So nourish- 
ment, cleanliness, and ventilation are the main remedies. 



A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 339 

Discharged patients are looked after and invited to come and 
dine now and then ; so are certain famishing creatnres who 
were never patients. Both the lady and the gentleman are 
well acquainted, not only with the histories of the patients 
and their families but with the characters and circumstances 
of great numbers of their neighbors ; of these they keep a reg- 
ister. It is their common experience that people, sinking 
down by inches into deeper and deeper poverty, will con- 
ceal it, even from them, if possible, unto the very last ex- 
tremity. 

The nurses of this Hospital are all young, — ranging, say, 
from nineteen to four-and-twenty. They have, even within 
these narrow limits, what many well-endowed Hospitals 
would not give them, a comfortable room of their own in 
which to take their meals. It is a beautiful truth, that in- 
terest in the children and sympathy with their sorrows bind 
these young women to their places far more stronglj- than 
any other consideration could. The best skilled of the 
nurses came originally from a kindred neighborhood, almost 
as poor, and she knew how much the work was needed. 
She is a fair dressmaker. The Hospital cannot pay her as 
man}^ pounds in the 3'ear as there are months in it, and one 
da}' the lady regarded it as a dnty to speak to her about her 
improving her prospects and following her trade. "Xo," she 
said ; she could never be so useful or so happy elsewhere 
any more ; she must stay among the children. And she 
stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a 
baby- boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak 
to her charge: a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge 
enough, laying hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, 
and staring very solemnly out of a blanket. The melting 
of the pleasant face into delighted smiles as this young 
gentleman gave an unexpected kick, and laughed at me, 
was almost worth my previous pain. 

An affecting play was acted in Paris j^ears ago, called 
The Children's Doctor. As I parted from my Children's 



390 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Doctor now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in 
his loose buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in 
the flow of his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn 
of his mustache, the exact realization of the Paris artist's 
ideal as it was presented on the stage. But no romancer 
that I know of has had the boldness to prefigure the life 
and home of this young husband and young wife in the 
Children's Hospital in the East of London. 

I came awa}'' from Ratcliffe by the Stepney railway sta- 
tion to the terminus at Fen church street. Any one who 
will reverse that route may retrace my steps. 



A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

It fell out on a clay in this last autumn that I had to go 
down from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour's 
business, accompanied by m}^ esteemed friend Bullfinch. 
Let the place of seaside resort be, for the nonce, called 
Namelesston. 

I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, 
pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of 
the Palais Royal or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the 
open air in the Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar 
and lemonade in the open air on the Italian Boulevard 
towards the small hours after midnight. Bullfinch — an ex- 
cellent man of business — had summoned me back across the 
Channel, to transact this said hour's business at Nameless- 
ton, and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a rail- 
w^ay carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each with 
his return ticket in his waistcoat pocket. 

Says Bullfinch : " I have a proposal to make. Let us dine 
at the Temeraire." 

I asked Bullfinch, Did he recommend the Temeraire ? 
Inasmuch as I had not been rated on the books of the 
Temeraire for many years. 

Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibilit}^ of recom- 
mending the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather 
sanguine about it. He "seemed to remember," Bullfinch 
said, that he had .dined well there. A plain dinner, but 
good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch 
obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but of its 
kind ver}^ fair. 

I appealed to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of my wants 

(391) 



392 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

and wa5^s to decide whether I was usually ready to be 
pleased with any dinner, or — for the matter of that — with 
anything that was fair of its kind and really what it claimed 
to be. Bullfinch doing me the honor to respond in the 
affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an Able Trencherman 
on board the Temeraire. 

"Now, our plan shall be this," says Bullfinch, with his 
forefinger at his nose. " As soon as we get to Namelesston, 
we'll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little 
dinner in an hour. And as we shall not have more than 
enough time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what do 
3'ou say to giving the house the best opportunities of serv- 
ing it hot and quickly by dining in the coflTee-roora ?" 

What I had to say was. Certainly. Bullfinch (who is b}^ 
nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of 
green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, 
urging considerations of time and cookery. 

In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire 
and alighted. A youth in livery received us on the door- 
step. " Looks well," said Bullfinch, confidentially. And 
then aloud, " Coffee-room !" 

The 3^outh in liver}'' (now perceived to be mouldy) con- 
ducted us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bull- 
finch to send the waiter at once, as we wished to order a little 
dinner in an hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the 
waiter until, the waiter continuing to wait in some un- 
known and invisible sphere of action, we rang for the waiter ; 
which ring produced the waiter, who announced himself as 
not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't 
wait a moment longer. 

So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melo- 
diously pitching his voice into a bar where two young 
ladies were keeping the books of the Temeraire, apolo- 
getically explained that we wished to order a little dinner 
in an hour, and that we were debarred from the execution 
of our inoffensive purpose by consignment to solitude. 



A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 393 

Hereupon one of the young ladies rang a "bell which re- 
produced — at the bar this time — the waiter who was not 
the waiter who ought to wait upon us ; that extraordinary 
man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people to 
say that he would'nt wait upon them, repeated his former 
protest with great indignation, and retired. 

Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to 
me " This won't do," when the waiter who ought to wait 
upon us left off keeping us waiting at last. " Waiter," said 
Bullfinch, piteously, "we have been along time waiting." 
The waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the blame upon 
the waiter who ought not to wait upon us, and said it was 
all that waiter's fault. 

" We wish," said Bullfinch, much depressed, " to order a 
little dinner in an hour. What can we have ?" 

" What would you like to have, gentlemen ?" 

Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, 
and with a forlorn old flj^-blown bill of fare in his hand 
which the waiter had given him, and which was a sort of 
general manuscript index to any Cookerj^-Book you please, 
moved the previous question. 

We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast 
duck. Agreed. At this table by this window. Punctually 
in an hour. 

I had been feigning to look out of this window ; but I 
had been taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, 
the dirty table-cloths, the stuffy, soupy, airless atmos- 
phere, the stale leavings everywhere about, the deep gloom 
of the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and the stomach- 
ache with which a lonely traveller at a distant table in a 
corner was too evidently afflicted. I now pointed out to 
Bulfinch the alarming circumstance that this traveller had 
dined. We hurriedly debated whether, without infringe- 
ment of good breeding, we could ask him to disclose if he 
had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, or roast duck ? We 
decided that the thing could not be politely done, and that 



894 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

we had set our own stomachs on a cast, and they must stand 
the hazzard of the die. 

I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true ; I am 
much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the 
hand ; I hold physiognomy to be infallible ; though all these 
sciences demand rare qualities in the student. But I also 
hold that there is no more certain index to personal charac- 
ter than the condition of a set of casters is to the character 
of any hotel. Knowing, and having often tested this theory 
of mine, Bullfiuch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying 
aside any remaining veil of disguise, I held before him in 
succession the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the clogged 
ca3'enne, the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the 
anchovy sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition. 

We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting 
was the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of 
Namelesston from the heavj^ and vapid closeness of the 
coffee-room of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive 
within us. We began to consider that perhaps the lonely 
traveller had taken physic, or done something injudicious 
to bring his complaint on. Bullfinch remarked he thought 
the waiter who ought to wait upon us had brightened a little 
when suggesting curry ; and although I knew him to have 
been at that moment the express image of despair, I allowed 
myself to become elevated in spirits. As we walked by the 
softly lapping sea, all the notabilities of Namelesston, who 
are forever going up and down with the changelessness of 
the tides, passed to and fro in procession. Pretty girls on 
horseback, and with detested riding-masters ; pretty girls 
on foot ; mature ladies in hats, — spectacled, strong-minded, 
and glaring at the opposite or weaker sex. The Stock 
Exchange was strongly represented, Jerusalem was strongly 
represented, the bores of the prosier London clubs were 
strongly represented. Fortune-hunters of all denominations 
were there, from hirsute insolvency in a curricle to closely 
bottoned-up swindlery in doubtful boots, on the sharp look- 



A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 395 

out for any likely young gentleman disposed to play a game 
at billiards round the corner. Masters of languages, their 
lessons finished for the day, were going to their homes out 
of sight of the sea ; mistresses of accomplishments, carrying 
small portfolios, likewise tripped homeward ; pairs of 
scliolastic pupils, two and two, went languidly along the 
beach, surveying the face of the waters as if waiting for 
some Ark to come and take them off. Spectres of the 
George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily among the crowd, 
bearing the outward semblance of ancient dandies, of every 
one of whom it might be said, not that he had one leg in 
the grave, or botli legs, but that he was steeped in the grave 
to tlie summit of his high shirt-collar, and had nothing real 
about him but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst 
of all the movements, the Namelesston boatmen leaned 
against the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or 
looked at the moored fishing-boats and at nothing. Such 
is the unchanging manner of life with this nuysery of our 
hardy seamen, and very dry nurses they are, and always 
wanting something to drink. The only two nautical per- 
sonages detached from the railing were the two fortunate 
possessors of the celebrated monstrous unknown barking- 
fish, just caught (frequently just caught oflT Namelesston,) 
who carried him about in a hamper, and pressed the scien- 
tific to look in at the lid. 

The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back 
to Temeraire. Says Bullfinch then to the youth in livery, 
with boldness : " Lavatory !" 

When we arrived at the family vault with a sky-light, 
which the youth in livery presented as the Institution sought, 
we had already whisked off our cravats and coats ; but find- 
ing ourselves in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen 
but two crumpled towels newly damp from the countenances 
of two somebody elses, we put on our cravats and coats 
again, and fled unwashed to the cofiTee-room. 

There, the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth 



SOG LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

our knives and forks and glasses on the cloth whose dirty 
acquaintance we had already had the pleasure of making, 
and whom we were pleased to recognize by the familiar ex- 
pression of its stains. And now there occurred the truly 
surprising phenomenon that the waiter who ought not to 
wait upon us swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of 
bread, and vanished with the same. 

Bullfinch with distracted eyes was following this unac- 
countable figure " out at the portal," like the Ghost in Ham- 
let, when the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled 
against it, carr3ing a tureen. 

"Waiter!" said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing 
his bill through his eye-glass. 

The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side table, 
and went to see what was amiss in this new direction. 

" This is not right, you know, waiter. Look here. Here's 
3'esterda3^'s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are 
again, two shillings. And what does Sixpence mean ?" 

So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter pro- 
tested that he didn't know what an3'thing meant. He 
wiped the prespiration from his clammy brow, and said it 
was impossible to do it — not particularizing what — and the 
kitchen was so far oflf. 

" Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered," said Mr. 
Indignation Cocker: so to call him. 

The waiter took it, looked intensely at* it, didn't seem to 
like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new 
light upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant six pence. 

"I tell you again," said Mr. Indignation Cocker, "here's 
yesterday's sherry — can't 3''ou see it ? — one and eightpence, 
and here we are again, two shillings. What do you make 
of one and eightpence and two shillings ?" 

Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence 
and two shillings, the waiter went out to tr3' if an3^body else 
could; merely casting a helpless backward glance at Bull- 
finch, in acknowledgment of his pathetic entreaties for our 



A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 397 

sonp-tureen. After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation 
Cocker read a newspaper, and coughed defiant coughs, Bull- 
finch rose to get the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and 
brought it : dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker's altered bill 
on Mr. Indignation Cocker's table as he came along. 

" It's quite impossible to do it, gentlemen," murmured 
the waiter ; " and the kitchen is so far off." 

" Well. You don't keep the house ; it's not your fault, 
we suppose. Bring some slierr3\" 

" Waiter !" From Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new 
and burning sense of injur}^ upon him. 

The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry stopped 
short, and came back to see what was wrong now. 

" Will you look here? This is worse than before. Do 
jT-ou understand ? Here's yesterday's sherry one and eight- 
pence, and here we are again two shillings. And what the 
devil does Ninepeuce mean ? " 

This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. He 
wrung his napkin, and niutelj^ appealed to the ceiling. 

" Waiter, fetch that sherry," says Bullfinch, in open wrath 
and revolt. 

" I want to know," persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, 
'' the meaning of Ninepence. I want to know the meaning 
of sherry one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are 
again two shillings. Send somebody." 

The distracted waiter got out of the room under pretext 
of sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But 
the instant lie appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indignation 
Cocker descended on him again. 

" Waiter !" 

" You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, 
waiter," sa^^s Bullfinch, sternly. 

*' I am very sorry, but it's quite impossible to do it, gen- 
tlemen," pleaded the waiter; and the kitchen — " 

"Waiter !" said Mr. Indignation Cocker, — " Is," resumed 
the waiter, " so far off, that — '* 

25 



398 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

"Waiter !" persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, "send some- 
body." 

We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out 
to hang himself, and we were much relieved by his fetching 
somebody, — in gracefull}^ flowing skirts and with a waist, — 
who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker's business. 

"Oh ! " said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surpassingly 
quenched by this apparition. " I wish to ask about this 
bill of mine, because it appears to me that there's a little 
mistake here. Let me show you. Here's yesterday's sherry 
one and eightpence, and here we are again two shillings, 
And how do you explain ninepence. 

However, it was explained in tones too soft to be over- 
heard, Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than 
"Ah-h-h ! Indeed ! Thank you ! Yes," and shortly after- 
wards went out a milder man. 

The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this 
time suffered severely ; drawing up a leg now and then, and 
sipping hot brandy and water with grated ginger in it. 
"When we tasted our (verv) mock, turtle soup, and were in- 
stantly seized with some disorder simulating apoplexy, and 
occasioned by the surcharge of the nose and brain with 
lukewarm dish-water holding in solution sour flour poison- 
ous condiments, and (say) seventy-five per cent, of miscella- 
neous kitchen stuff rolled into balls, we were inclined to 
trace the disorder to that source. On the other hand, there 
was a silent anguish upon him too strongly resembling the 
results established within ourselves by the sherry, to be 
discarded from alarmed consideration. Again : we ob- 
served him, with terror, to be much overcome bj^ our sole's 
being aired in a temporary retreat close to him, while the 
waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his friends. And 
when the curry made its appearance he suddenly retired in 
great disorder. 

In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as con- 
tradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven 



A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 309 

shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I agreed 
unanimously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked 
nasty little dinner could be got for the money any where 
else under the sun. With that comfort to our backs, we 
turned them on the dear old Temeraire, the charging 
Temeraire, and resolved (in the Scottish dialect) to gang 
nae mair to the flabby Temeraire. 



MR. BARLOW. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

A GREAT reader of good fictiou at an unusually early a|2:e, 
it seems to me as though I had been born under the superin- 
tendence of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose name 
stands at the head of my present reflections. The instructive 
monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered as the tutor of 
Master Harry Sanford and Master Tommy Merton. He knew 
everything, and didactically improved all sorts of occasions, 
from the consumption of a plate of cherries to the contempla- 
tion of a starlight night. What youth came to without Mr. 
Barlow, was displayed, in the history of Sanford and Merton, 
by the example of a certain awful Master Mash. This young 
wretch wore buckles and powder, conducted himself with 
insupportable levity at the theatre, had no idea of facing a 
mad bull single-handed (in which I think him less reprehensi- 
ble, as remotely reflecting my own character), and was a 
frightful instance of the enervating effects of luxury upon the 
human race. 

Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to 
posterity as childhood's first experience of a Bore ! Immortal 
Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness of 
ages 1 

My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many 
counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he 
has done me. 

In the first place, he never made, or took, a joke. This 
insensibility on Mr. Barlow's part not only cast its own gloom 
over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny jest-books 
of the time. For, groaning under a moral spell constraining 
me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could not choose but 
(400) 



MR. BARLOW. 401 

ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed jest "What 
would he think of it ? What would he see in it ?" The point 
of the jest immediately became a sting, and stung my con- 
science. For, my mind's eye saw him stolid, frigid, perchance 
taldng from its shelf some dreary Greek book and translating 
at full length what some dismal sage said (and touched up 
afterwards, perhaps for publication), when he banished some 
unlucky joker from Athens. 

The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions 
of my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability 
of the man to my favorite fancies and amusements, is the 
thing for which I hate him most. What right had he to bore 
his way into my Arabian Nights ? Yet he did. He was 
always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the Sailor. 
If he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I knew he 
would have trimmed it, and lighted it, and delivered a lecture 
over it on the qualities of sperm oil, with a glance at the whale 
fisheries. He would so soon found out — on mechanical prin- 
ciples — the peg in the neck of the Enchanted Horse, and 
would have turned it the right way in so workmanlike a man- 
ner, that the horse could never have got any height into the 
air, and the story couldn't have been. He would have proved, 
by map and compass, that there was no such kingdom as the 
delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. 
He would have caused the hypocritical young prig, Harry, to 
make an experiment, — with the aid of a temporary building 
in the garden and a dummy, — demonstrating that you couldn't 
let a choktd Hunchback down an eastern chimney with a 
cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the Sul- 
tan's purveyor. 

The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan 
pantomime 1 remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click, 
click, ting, ting, bang, bang, weedle, weedle, weedle. Bang ! 
I recall the chilling air that passed across my frame and cooled 
my hot delight, as the thought recurred to me : " This would 
never do for Mr. Barlow !" After the curtain drew up, 



402 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS, 

dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow's considering the costumes of 
the Nymphs of the Neb la as being sufficiently opaque ob- 
truded themselves on my enjoyment. In the C -- J- 
ceivedtwo persons; one, a fascinating unaccountable creatue 
of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though f<^»We m ;»; 
tellect with flashes of brilliancy; the other, a pupil_ for Mr. 
Barlow I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly nse early 
in the morning, and butter the pavement for him, and, when 
he had brought him down, would look severely out ol b.s 
study window and a.k him how he enjoyed the fun. _ 

I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokersm the 
house and singe him with the whole collection, to bring hun 
belter acquainted with the properties of incandescent iron, on 
which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pictnred Mr. 
Barlow's instituting a comparison between the clowns con- 
ductathisstudies,_drinking up the ink, licking his copy- 
book, ai,d using his head for blotting-paper,-and that of le 
already mentioned young Frig of Prigs, Harry, sitting at the 
Barlovian feet sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of 
useful knowledge. I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would 
smooth the clown's hair down, instead of letting it stand erect 
in three tall tufts; and how, after a couple of years or so 
with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his legs close together when 
he walked, and would take his hands out of his big loose 
pockets, and wouldn't have a jump lefi in him. ^ 

That I am particularly ignorant what most things m the 
universe are made of, and how they are made, is another of 
my charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me 
of developing into a Harry, and with the further dread upon 
me of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bringing down 
upon myself a cold shower bath of explanations and experi- 
ment, 1 forebore enlightenment in my youth, and became as 
they say in melodramas, " the wreck you now behold. Ihat 
I consorted with idlers and dunces, is another of the me.an- 
choly facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible, ihat 
Pragmatical Prig, Harry, became so detestable in my s.g.u. 



MR. BARLOAV. 403 

that he being reported studious in the South, I would have 
fled idle to the extremest North. Better to learn misconduct 
from a Master Mash than science and statistics from a Sand- 
ford I So I took the path which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might 
never have trodden. Thought I with a shudder, " Mr. Bar- 
low is a bore, with an immense constructive power of making 
bores. His prize specimen is a bore. He seeks to make a 
bore of me. That Knowledge is Power I am not prepared to 
gainsay ; but, with Mr. Barlow, Knowledge is Power to 
bore." Therefore I took refuge in the Caves of Ignorance, 
wherein I have resided ever since, and which are still my pri- 
vate address. 

But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. 
Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, 
seeking to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturit}^ Irre- 
pressible instructive monomaniacs, Mr. Barlow fills my life 
with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out upou 
me when I least expect him. 

A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice. 

Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the Moving 
Panorama trade, and having on various occasions identiiied 
him in the dark with a long wand in his hand, holding forth 
in his old way (made more appalling in this connection, by 
his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle's own Dead 
Sea Fruit in mistake for a joke), I systematically shun pic- 
torial entertainment on rollers. Similarly, I should demand 
responsible bail and guaranty against the appearance of Mr. 
Barlow, before committing myself to attendance at any assem- 
blage of my fellow-creatures where a bottle of water and a 
note-book were conspicuous objects. For in either of those 
assuciations, I should expressly expect him. But such is the 
designing nature of the man, that he steals in where no reason- 
ing precaution or provision could expect him. As in the 
following case : — 

Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. In 
this country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, 



404 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

were announced to appear in the Town Hall for the general 
delectation, this last Christmas week. Knowing Mr. Barlow 
to be unconnected with the Mississippi, though holding re- 
publican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took a stall. 
My object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in 
what the bills described as their " National Ballads, Planta- 
tion Break-Downs, Nigger Part-Songs, ('hoice Conundrums, 
Sparkling Repartees, &c." I found the nine dressed alike, in 
the black coat and trousers, white waistcoat, very large shirt 
front, very large shirt collar, and very large white tie and 
wristbands, which constitute the dress of the mass of the 
African race, and which has been observed by travellers to 
prevail over a vast number of degrees of latitude. All the 
nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips. At 
the extremities of the curve they formed seated in their chairs, 
were the performers on the Tambourine and Bones. The 
centre Momus, a black of Melancholy aspect (who inspired me 
with a vague uneasiness for which I could not then account), 
performed on a Mississippi instrument closely resembling 
what was once called in this Island a hurdy-gurdy. 

The Momuses on either side of him had each another instru- 
ment peculiar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened 
to a stringed weather-glass held upside down. There were 
likewise a little flute, and a violin. All went well for a while 
and we had had several sparkling repartees exchanged be- 
tween the performers on the tambourine and bones, when the 
black of melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and addressing 
him in a deep and improving voice as " Bones, sir," delivered 
certain grave remarks to him concerning the juveniles present, 
and the season of the year; whereon I perceived that I was 
in the presence of Mr. Barlow, — corked I 

Another night — and this was in London — I attended the 
representation of a little comedy. As the characters were 
life-like (and consequently not improving), and as they went 
upon their several ways and designs without personally ad- 
dressing themselves to me, I felt rather confident of coming 



MR. BARLOW. 405 

tbrough it without being regarded as Tommy ; the more so, as 
we were clearly getting close to the end. But I deceived myself. 
All of a sudden, and apropos of nothing, everybody concerned 
cnme to a check and halt, advanced to the footlights in a gen- 
eral rally to take dead aim at me, and brought me down with 
a moral homily, in which I detected the dread hand of Barlow. 

Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, 
that on the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, 
where no vestige of a springe could have been apprehended 
by the timidest. It was a burlesque, that I saw performed ; 
an uncoraprising burlesque, where everybody concerned, but 
es^ ecially the ladies, carried on at a very considerable rate 
indeed. Most prominent and active among the corps of 
performers was what I took to be (and she really gave me 
very fair opportunities of coming to a right conclusion) a 
young lady, of a pretty figure. She was dressed as a pic- 
turesque young gentleman, whose pantaloons had been cut 
off in their infancy, and she had very neat knees, and very 
neat satin boots. Immediately after singing a slang song and 
dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure approached the 
fatal lamps, and, bending over them, delivered in a thrilling 
voice a random Eulogium on, and Exhortation to pursue, the 
Virtues. '' Great Heaven !" was my exclamation. ''Barlow!" 

There is still another aspect in wliich Mr. Barlow perpetu- 
all}^ insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, which 
is more unendurable yet, on account of its extreme aggressive- 
ness. For the purposes of a Review or newspaper, he will 
get up an abstruse subject with infinite pains, will Barlow, ut- 
terly regardless of the prince of midnight oil, and indeed of 
everything else, save cramming himself to the eyes. 

But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, 
he is not contented with having rammed it home and dis- 
charged it upon me. Tommy, his target, but he pretends that 
he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it, — 
that he imbibed it with his mother's milk, — and that I, the 
wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having 



406 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the 
foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent ? What Mr. Barlow 
had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it 
surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have 
at my fingers' ends to-day 1 And yet Mr. Barlow systemati- 
cally carries it over me with a higli hand, and will tauntingly 
ask me in his articles whether it is possible that I am not 
aware that every schoolboy knows that the fourteenth turning 
on the left in the steppes of Russia will conduct to such-and- 
such a wandering tribe ? With other disparaging questions 
of like nature. So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to 
any journal as a volunteer correspondent (which I frequently 
find him doing), he will previously have gotten somebody to 
tell him some tremendous technicality, and will write in the 
coolest manner : "Now, Sir, I may assume that every reader 
of your columns, possessing average information and intelli- 
gence, knows as well as I do that" — say that the draught 
from the touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such 
a proportion in the nicest fractions to the draught from the 
muzzle ; or some equally familiar little fact. But whatever 
it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation of Mr. 
Barlow, and the depression of his enforced and enslaved pupil. 
Mr. Barlow's knowledge of my own pursuits, I find to be 
so profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as 
nothing. Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a feigned name, 
but detected by me) has occasionally taught me, in a sonorous 
voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles that I 
took the liberty of teaching him five-and-twenty years ago. 
My closing article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow, is, 
that he goes out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out 
everywhere high and low, and that he will preach to me, and 
that I can't get rid of him. He makes of me a Promethean 
Tommy, bound ; and he is the vulture that gorges itself upon 
the liver of my uninstructed mind. 



ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

It is one of my fancies that even my idlest walk must al- 
ways have its appointed destination. I set myself a task 
before I leave my lodging in Covent Garden on a street ex- 
pedition, and should no more think of altering my route by the 
way, or turning back and leaving a part of it unachieved, than 
I should think of fraudulently violating an agreement entered 
into with somebody else. The other day, finding myself under 
this kind of obligation to proceed to Limehouse, I started 
punctually at noon, in compliance with the terms of the con- 
tract with myself to which my good faith was pledged. 

On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as 
my Beat, and myself as a higher sort of Police Constable 
doing duty on the same There is many a Ruffian in the 
streets whom I mentally collar and clear out of them, who 
would see mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I could 
deal with him phj^sically. 

Issuing forth upon this very Beat, and following with my 
eyes three hulking garotters on their way home, — which home 
I could confidently swear to be within so many yards of Drury 
Lane, in such a narrowed and restricted direction (though 
they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed as I in mine),-- 
I went on duty with a consideration which I respectfully offer 
to the new Chief Commissioner, — in whom I thoroughh^ con- 
fide as a tried and efficient public servant. How often 
(thought I) have I been forced to swallow, in Police reports, 
the intolerable stereotyped pill of nonsense how that the Po- 
lice Constable informed the worth}^ magistrate how that the 
associates of the Prisoner did at that present speaking dwell 
in a street or court which no man dared go down, and how 

(407) 



408 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

that the worthy magistrate had heard of the dark reputation 
of such street or court, and how that our readers would doubt- 
less remember that it was always the same street or court 
which was thus edifyingly discuurscd about, say once a fort- 
night. 

Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a cir- 
cular to every Division of Police employed in London, requir- 
ing instantly the names in all districts of all such much-puffed 
streets or courts which no man durst go down; and suppose 
that in such circular he gave plain warning : " If those places 
really exist, they are a proof of Police inefficiency which I 
mean to punish 5 and if they do not exist, but are a conven- 
tional fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit Police con- 
nivance with professional crime, which I also mean to 
punish" — what then? Fictions or realities, could they sur- 
vive the touchstone of this atoui of common sense ? To tell 
us in open court, until it has become as trile a feature of news 
as the great gooseberry, that a costly Police system such as 
was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days of 
steara and gas and photographs of thieves and electric tele- 
graphs, the sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts I Why, a 
parity of practice, in all departments, woukl bring back the 
Plague in two summers, and the Druids in a century I 

Walking faster under my share of this public injury, I over- 
turned a wretched little creature who, clutching at the rags of 
a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its ragged hair 
with the other, pattered with bare feet over the muddy stones. 
I stojiped to raise and succor this poor weeping wretch, and 
fifty like it, but of both sexes, were about me in a moment, 
begging, tumbling, fighting, clamoring, yelling, shivering in 
their nakedness and hunger. The piece of money I had put 
into the claw of the child I had overturned, was clawed out of 
it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again 
out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the ob- 
scene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt 
the money might be. In raising the child, I had drawn it 



ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 409 

aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this took place among 
some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins of demolished 
buildings, hard by Temple Bar. 

Unexpectedly from among them emerged a genuine Police 
Constable, before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various 
directions, he making feints and darts in this direction and in 
that, aid catching nothing. When all were frightened away, 
he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief from it, wiped 
his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat to their 
places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great moral 
duty, — as indeed he had, in doing what was set down for him. 
I looked at him, and I looked about at the disorderly traces in 
the mud, and I thought of the drops of rain and the footprints of 
an extinct creature, hoary ages upon o.ges old, that geologists 
have identified on the face of a cliff; and this speculation 
came over me : If this mud could petrify at this moment, 
and could lie concealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder 
whether the race of men then to be our successors on the earth 
could, from these or any marks, by the utmost force of the 
human Intel iect, unassisted by tradition, deduce such an as- 
tounding inference as the existence of a polished state of 
society that bore with the public savagery of neglected children 
in the streets of its capital city and was proud of its power 
ly sea and land, and never used its power to seize and save 
thera. 

After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up 
it towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an incon- 
sistent look. There seemed to be some unlucky inconisisteney 
in the atmosphere that day, for though the proportions of St. 
Paul's Cathedral, are very beautiful, it had an air of being 
somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes, I felt as though the 
cross were too high up, and perched upon the intervening 
golden ball too far away. 

Facing eastward, I left behind me Smith field and Old 
Bailey,— fire and fagot, condemned Hold, public hanging, 
whipping through the city at the carttuil, pillory, branding- 



410 LIFE OF CHAELES DICKENS. 

iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which rude hands 
have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite down upon 
us as yet, — and went my way upon my Beat, noting how 
oddly characteristic neighborhoods are divided from one an- 
other, hereabout, as though by an invisible line across the way. 
Here, shall cease the bankers and the money-changers; here, 
shall begin the shipping interest and the nautical-instrument 
shops ; here, shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavoring of 
groceries and drugs ; here, shall come a strong infusion of 
butchers ; now small hosiers shall be in the ascendant ; 
henceforth everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed 
price attached. Ail this as if specially ordered and appointed. 

A single stride at Houudsditch Church, no wider than suf- 
ficed to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canongate, 
which the Debtors in Holyrood Sanctuary were wont to re- 
lieve their minds by shipping over, as Scott relates, and 
standing in delightful daring of Catchpoles on the free 
side, — a single stride, and everything is entirely changed in 
grain and character. West of the stride, a table, or a chest 
of drawers on sale shall be of mahogany and French-pol- 
ished ; East of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a 
cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the stride, a 
penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained ; East 
of the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed char- 
acter, as seeking to make more of itself for the money. My 
Beat lying round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent 
Sugar Refineries, — great buildings, tier upon tier, that have 
the appearance of being nearly related to the Dock- Ware- 
houses at Liverpool, — I turned off to my right, and passing 
round the awkward corner on my left, came suddenly on an 
apparition familiar to London streets afar off. 

What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the 
woman who has fallen forward, double, through some af- 
fection of the spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn 
to one side, so that it now droops over the back of one of her 
arms at about the wrist ? Who does not know her staff, and 



ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 411 

her sbawl, and lier basket, as she gropes her way along, capa- 
ble of seeing nothing but the pavement, never begging, never 
stopping, f(irever going somewhere on no business? How 
does she live, whence does she come, whiiher does she go, and 
why ? I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught 
but bone and parchment. Slight clianges steal over her, for 
there is a shadowy suggestion of human skin on them now. 
The Strand may be taken as the central point about which 
she revolves in a half-mile orbit. How comes she so far East 
as this ? And coming back too ! Having been how much 
fuither? She is a rare spectacle in this neighborhood. I 
receive intelligent information to this eflect from a dog, — a lop- 
sided mongrel with a foolish tail, plodding along with his 
tail up, and his ears pricked, and displaying an amiable in- 
terest in the ways of his fellow-men, — if I may be allowed the 
expression. After pausing at a porkshop, he is jogging East- 
ward like myself, with a benevolent countenance and a watery 
mouth, as though musing on the many excellencies of pork, 
when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching. He is 
noi so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed bj 
that), as at the circumstance that it has within itself the means 
of locomotion. He stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a 
slight point, stares, utters a short, low growl, and glistens at 
the nose, — as I conceive with terror. The bundle contiuuinor 
to approach, he barks, turns tail, and is about to fly, when, 
arguing with himself that flight is not becoming in a dog, he 
turns, and once more faces the advancing heap of clothes. 
Afler much hesitation it occurs to him that there may be a 
face in it somewhere. Desperately resolving to undertake the 
adventure and pursue the inquiry, he goes slovv^ly up to the 
bundle, goes slowly round it, and coming at length upon the 
human countenance down there where never human counte- 
nance should be, gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East 
India Docks. 

Being now in the Commercial-road district of my Beat, and 
bethiukiiig myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my 



412 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

pace that I may turn out of tbe road at that point, and see 
how ni}^ small Eastern Star is shining. 

The Children's Hospital, to which T gave that name, is in 
full force. All its beds occupied. There is a new face on the 
bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is 
now at rest forever. Much kind sympathy has been here, 
since my former visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely 
garnished with dolls. I wonder what Poodles may think of 
them, as they stretch out their arms above the bed, and stare, 
and display their splendid dresses. Poodles has a greater 
interest in the patients. I find him making the round of the 
bed, like a house-surgeon, attended by another dog, — a 
friend, — who appears to trot about with him in the character 
of his pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious to make me known 
to a pretty little girl, looking wonderfully healthy, who has 
had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee. A difficult opera- 
tion, Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, 
but perfectly successful, as you see, dear Sir ! The patient, 
patting Poodles, adds with a smile : " The leg was so 
much trouble to me, that I am glad it's gone." I never saw 
anything in doggery finer than the deportment of Poodles, 
when another little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar 
enlargement of the tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, 
to be on a level with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with 
his own sympathetically out), so very gravely and knowingly, 
that I feel inclined to put my hand in my waistcoat pocket, and 
give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. 

On my Beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its ter- 
mination, I found myself near to certain '' Lead Mills." Struck 
by the name, which wa«? fresh in my memory, and finding, on 
inquiry, that these same Lead Mills w^ere identical w^ith those 
same Lead Mills of which I made mention when I first visited 
the East London Children's Hospital and its neighborhood, as 
Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to have a look at them. 

Keceived by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and 
partners with their father in the concern, and who testified 



ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 413 

every desire to sbow their Works to me freely, I went over 
the Lead Mills. The purport of such works is the conversion 
of Pig Lead into White Lead. This conversion is brought 
about by the slow and gradual effecting of certain successive 
chemical changes in the lead itself. The processes are pic- 
turesque and interesting, — the most so, being the burying of 
the lead, at a certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot 
containing a certain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots 
being buried in vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten 
weeks. 

Hopping up ladders and across planks and on elevated 
perches until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a 
Bird, or a Bricklayer, I became conscious of standing on noth- 
ing particular, looking down into one of a series of large cock- 
lofts, with the outer day peeping in through the chinks in the 
tiled roof above. A number of women were ascending to, 
and descending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the 
upward journey a pot of prepared lead and acid, for deposi- 
tion under the smoking tan . When one layer of pots was com- 
pletely filled, it was carefully covered in with planks, and 
those w^ere carefully covered with tan again, and then another 
layer of pots was begun above ; sufficient means of ventilation 
being preserved through wooden tubes. Going down into the 
cockloft then filling, I found the heat of the tan to be sur- 
prisingly great, and also the odor of the lead and acid to be 
not absolutely exquisite, though I believe not noxious at that 
stage. In other cocklofts where the pots were being ex- 
humed, the heat of the steaming tan was much greater, and 
the smell was penetrating and peculiar. There were cocklofts 
in all stages ; full and empty, half filled and half emptied ; 
strong, active women were clambering about them busily ; and 
the whole thing had rather the air of the upper part of the 
house of some immensely rich old Turk, whose faithful Seraglio 
were hiding his money because the Sultan or the Pasha was 
coming. 

As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the in- 

26 



414 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

stance of this White Lead, processes of stirring, separating, 
washing, grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of 
these are unquestionably inimical to health, the danger arising 
from inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact between 
the lead and the touch, or both. Against these dangers, I 
found good respirators provided (simply made of flannel and 
muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, and in some instances 
washed with scented soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose 
gowns. Everywhere, there was as much fresh air as windows, 
well placed and opened, could possibly admit. And it was 
explained that the precaution of frequently changing the women 
employed in the worst parts of the work (a precaution originat- 
ing in their own experience or apprehension of its ill effects) 
was found salutary. They had a mysterious and singular 
appearance with the mouth and nose covered, and the loose 
gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the old Turk and the 
Seraglio all the better for the disguise. 

At last this vexed white lead having been buried and resus- 
citated, and heated, and cooled, and stirred, and separated, and 
washed, and ground, and rolled, and pressed, is subjected to 
the action of intense fiery heat. A row of women, dressed as 
above described, stood, let us say, in a large stone bakehouse, 
pas.sing on the baking-dishes as they were given out by the 
cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens. The oven or stove, 
cold as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house, and was full 
of men and women on temporary footholds, briskly passing 
up and stowing away the dishes. The duor of another oven or 
stove, about to be cooled and emptied, was opened from above, 
for the Uncommercial countenance to peer down into. The 
Uncommercial countenance withdrew itself, with expedition 
and a sense of suffocation from the dull-glowing heat and the 
overpowering smell. On the whole, perhaps the going into 
these stoves to work when they are freshly opened, may be 
the worst part of the occupation. 

But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these 
lead mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers 
of the occupation to the lowest point. 



ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 415 

A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there 
might have been more towels), and a room in which they hang 
their clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a good 
fire-range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and 
to watch that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands 
before touching their food. An experienced medical attendant 
is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms of lead- 
poisoning are carefully treated. Their tea-pots and such things 
were set out on tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I 
saw their room, and it had a homely look. It is found that 
they bear the work much better than men ; some few of them 
have been at it for years, and the great majority of those I 
observed were strong and active. On the other hand it should 
be remembered that most of them are very capricious and 
irregular in their attendance. 

American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before 
very long White Lead may be made entirely by machinery. 
The sooner, the better. In the meantime, I parted from my 
two frank conductors over the mills, by telling them that they 
had nothing there to be concealed, and nothing to be blamed 
for. As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of lead- 
poisoning and work-people seems to me to have been pretty 
fairly summed up by the Irish woman whom I quoted in my 
former paper : " Some of them gits lead-pisoned soon, and 
some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many, 
niver, and 't is all according to the constitooshun, Sur, and 
some constitooshuns is strong and some is weak." 

Retracing my footsteps over my Beat, I went off duty. 



A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a 
pursuit (no matter what), which could be transacted by my- 
self alone ; in which I could have no help ; which imposed a 
constant strain on the attention, memory, observation and phy- 
sical powers ; and which involved an almost fabulous amount 
of change of place and rapid railway travelling. I had fol- 
lowed this pursuit through an exceptionally trying winter in 
an always trying climate, and had resumed it in England after 
but a brief repose. Thus it came to be prolonged until, at 
length — and, as it seemed, all of a sudden— it so wore me 
out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful confidence, 
upon myself to achieve the constantly recurring task, and 
began to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred, 
shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, 
and dull of spirit. The medical advice I sought within a few 
hours, was given in two words: "Instant rest." Being ac- 
customed to observe myself as curiously if I were another man, 
and knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly- 
halted in the pursuit of which I speak, and rested. 

My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the 
book of my life, in which nothing should be written from with- 
out for a brief season of a few weeks. But some very singu- 
lar experiences recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and 
I am going to relate them literally. I repeat the word : 
literally. 

My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence 

between my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle's 

as I find it recorded in a work of fiction called Little Dorrit. 

To be sure, Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and 

(416) 



A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 41T 

my calling had been of a less harmful (and less remunerative) 
nature, but it was all one for that. 

Here is Mr. Merdle's case : — 

"At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were 
known, and several brand-new maladies invented with the 
speed of Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had 
concealed a dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a large 
estate of water on the chest from his grandfather, he had had 
an operation performed upon him every morning of his life 
for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of im- 
portant veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he 
had had something the matter with his lungs, he had had 
something the matter with his heart, he had had something 
the matter with his brain. Five hundred people who sat 
down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the whole subject, 
believed before they had done breakfast, that they privately 
and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle, 
' You must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a 
candle ;' and that they knew Mr. Merdle to say to Physician, 
'A man can die but once.' By about eleven o'clock in the 
forenoon, something the matter with the brain, became the 
favorite theory against the field ; and by twelve the something 
had been distinctly ascertained to be * Pressure.' 

" Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, 
and seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might 
have lasted all day but for Bar's having taken the real state 
of the case into Court at half-past nine. Pressure, however, 
so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a 
greater favorite than ever. There was a general moralizing 
upon Pressure in every street. All the people who had tried 
to make money and had not been able to do it, said. There you 
were ! You no sooner began to devote yourself to the pur- 
suit of wealth, than you got Pressure. The idle people im- 
proved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, 
what you brought yourself to by work, work, work ! You 
persisted in working, you overdid it, Pressure came on, and 



418 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

you were done for I This consideration was very potent in 
many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the young 
clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger 
of overdoing it. Th se, one and all declared, quite piously, 
that they hoped they would never forget the warning as long 
as they lived, and that their conduct might be so regulated as 
to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their 
friends, for many years." 

Just my case — if I had only known it — when I was quietly 
basking in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow ! 

But while 1 so rested, thankfully recoverin 2; every hour, I had 
experiences more odd than this. I had experiences of spiritual 
conceit, for which, as giving me a new warn'ng against that 
curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to the supposi- 
tion that I was too far gone to protest against playing sick 
lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof. All sorts of 
people seemed to become vicariously religious at my expense. 
I received the most uncompromising warning that I was a 
Heathen ; on the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, 
like Ihe most of his ignorant and vain and daring class, could 
not construct a tolerable sentence in his native tongue or pen 
a fair letter. This inspired individual called me to order 
roundly, and knew in the freest and easiest way where I was 
going to, and what would become of me if I failed to fashion 
myself on his bright example, and was on terms of blasphe- 
mous confidence with the Heavenly Host. He was in the 
secrets of my heart and in the lowest soundings of my soul — 
he ! — and could read the depths of my nature better than his 
ABC, and could turn me inside out like his own clammy glove. 
But what is far more extraordinary than this — for such dirty 
water as this could alone be drawn from such a shallow and 
muddy source — I found from the information of a beneficed 
clergyman, of whom I never heard and whom I never saw, that I 
had not, as I rather supposed I had, lived a life of some reading, 
contemplation and inquiry ; that I had not studied, as I rather 
supposed I had, to inculcate some Christian lessons in books ; 



A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE. 419 

tliat I had never tried, as I rather supposed I had, to turn a 
child or two tenderly towards the knowledge and love of our 
Saviour; that I had never had, as I rather supposed I had had, 
departed friends, or stood beside open graves ; but that I had 
lived a life of " uninterrupted prosperity," and that I needed 
this ''check overmuch," and that the way to turn it to account 
was to read these sermons and these poems enclosed, and 
written and issued by my correspondent I I beg it may be 
understood that I relate facts of my own uncommercial expe- 
rience, and no vain imaginings. The documents in proof lie 
near ray hand. 

Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining 
character, was the wonderful persistency with which kind sym- 
pathizers assumed that I had injuriously coupled with the so 
suddenly relinquished pursuit those personal habits of mine 
most obviously incompatible with it, and most plainly im- 
possible of being maintained, along with it. As all that exer- 
cise, all that cold bathing, all that wind and weather, all that 
uphill training — all that everything else, say, which is usually- 
carried about by express trains in a portmanteau and hatbox. 
and partaken of under a flaming row of gaslights in the com- 
pany of two thousand people. This assuming of a whole case 
against all fact and likelihood struck me as particularly droll, 
and was an oddity of which I certainly had had no adequate 
experience in life until I turned that curious fly-leaf. 

My old acquaintances the begging-letter writers came out 
on the fly-leaf, very piously indeed. They were glad, at such 
a serious crisis, to afford me another opportunity of sending 
that post-office order. I needn't make it a pound, as previously 
insisted on ; ten shillings might ease my mind. And Heaven 
forbid that they should refuse, at such an insignificant figure, 
to take a weight of the memory of an erring fellow-creature I 
One gentleman of an artistic turn (and copiously illustrating 
the books of the Mendicity Society), though it might soothe 
my conscience in the tender respect of gifts misused, if I 
would immediately cash up in aid of his lowly talent for 



420 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

original design — as a specimen of which he enclosed me a 
work of art, which I recognized as a tracing from a woodcut 
originally published in the late Mrs. Trollope's book on 
America, forty or fifty years ago. The number of people who 
were prepared to live long years after me, untiring benefactors 
to their species, for fifty pounds apiece down, was astonishing. 
Also, of those who wanted bank-notes for stiff penitential 
amounts, to give away — not to keep on any account. 

Divers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated rec- 
ommendations of themselves in the fly-leaf that was to have 
been so blank. It was specially observable that every pre- 
scriber, whether in a moral or physical direction, knew me 
thoroughly — knew me from head to heel, in and out, through 
and through, upside down. I was a glass piece of general 
property, and everybody was on the most surprisingly inti- 
mate terms with me. A few public institutions had compli- 
mentary perceptions of corners in my mind, of which, after 
considerable self-examination, I have not discovered any in- 
dication. Neat little printed forms were addressed to tho'^e 
corners, beginning with the words : " I give and bequeath." 

Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most 
honest, the most modest, and the least vainglorious of all the 
records upon this strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the self- 
deceived discoverer of the recondite secret " how to live four 
or five hundred years ?" Doubtless it will seem so, yet the 
statement is not exaggerative by any means, but is made in 
my serious and sincere conviction. With this, and with a laugh 
at the rest that shall not be cynical; I turn the fly-leaf and go 
on again. 



A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o'clock 
in the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view 
commanded by the windows of my lodging, an equestrian 
phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback dressed 
in the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high 
boots, some otlier (and much larger) fellow-creature's breeches, 
of a slack-baked doughy color and a baggy form, a blue shirt, 
whereof the skirt or tail was puffily tucked into the waistband 
of the said breeches, no coat, a red shoulder-belt, and a demi- 
semi-military scarlet hat with a feathered ornament in front, 
which to the uninstructed human vision had the appearance 
of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid down the newspaper with 
which I had been occupied, and surveyed the fellow-man in 
question, with astonishment. Whether he had been sitting to 
any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition of Sartor Re- 
sartus ; whether "the husk or shell of him," as the esteemed 
Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded on a jockey, on 
a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap porcelain, on a toy- 
shop, on Guy Fawkes, on Wax-Work, on Gold Digging, on 
Bedlam, or on all, were doubts that greatly exercised my mind. 
Meanwhile my fellow-man stumbled and slided, excessively 
against his will, on the slippery stones of my Covent Garden 
street, and elicited shrieks from several sympathetic females, 
by convulsively restraining himself from pitching over his 
horse's head. In the very crisis of these evolutions, and 
indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail was in a 
tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere about town, this 
cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise 
stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the 

(421) 



422 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate 
effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three 
right hands as commanding unseen troops to Up, guards, and 
at 'em. Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused 
them to be instantly bolted with to some remote spot of earth 
in the direction of the Surrey Hills. 

Judging from these appearances that a procession was under 
way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had the satis- 
faction of beholding it advancing along the street. It was a 
Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and was 
long enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. There 
were a great number of children in it, some of them so very 
young in their mothers' arms as to be in the act of practically 
exemplifying their abstinence from fermented liquors, and 
attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while the procession 
defiled. The display was on the whole, pleasant to see, as any 
good-humored holiday assemblage of clean, cheerful, and well- 
conducted people should be. It was bright with ribbons, tinsel, 
and shoulder-belts, and abounded in flowers, as if those latter 
trophies had come up in profusion under much watering. The 
day being breezy, the insubordination of the large banners was 
very reprehensible. Each of these being borne aloft on two 
poles and stayed with some half-dozen lines, was carried, as 
polite books in the last century used to be written, by "various 
bands," and the anxiety expressed in the upturned faces of 
those officers — something between the anxiety attendant on 
the balancing art, and that inseparable from the pastime of, 
kite-flying, with a touch of the angler's quality in landing his 
scaly prey — much impressed me. Suddenly, too, a banner 
would shiver in the wind, and go about in the most inconveni- 
ent manner. This always happened oftenest with such gor- 
geous standards as those representing a gentleman in black 
corpulent with tea and water, in the laudable act of summarily 
reforming a family feeble and pinched with beer. The gentle- 
man in black distended by wind would then conduct himself 
with the most unbecoming levity, while the beery family, 



A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 423 

growing beerier, would frantically try to tear themselves 
away from bis ministration. Some of the inscriptions accom- 
panying the banners w^ere of a highly determined character, as 
"We never, never will give up the temperance cause," with 
similar sound resolutions rather suggestive to the profane 
mind of Mrs, Micawber's "I never will desert Mr. Micavvber," 
and of Mr. Micawber's retort, "Really, my dear, I am not 
aware that you were ever required by any human being to do 
anything of the sort." 

At intervals a gloom would fall on the passing members of 
the procession, for which I was at first unable to account. 
But this I discovered, after a little observation, to be occa- 
sioned by the coming on of the Executioners, — the terrible 
official beings who were to make the speeches by and by, — 
who were distributed in open carriages at various points of 
the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, 
as from many wet blankets, invariablv preceded the rolling on 
of the dreadful cars containing these Headsmen, and I noticed 
that the wretched people who closely followed them, and who 
were in a manner forced to contemplate their folded arms, 
complacent countenances, and threatening lips, were more 
overshadowed by the clond and damp than those in front. 
Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an implaca- 
bility towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so plain a de- 
sire to tear them limb from limb, that I would respectfully 
suggest to the managers the expediency of conveyin<)r the Exe- 
cutioners to the scene of their dismal labors by unfrequented 
ways and in closely titled carts next Whitsuntide. 

The procession was composed of a series of smaller proces- 
sions, which had come together, each from its own metropoli- 
tan district. An infusion of Allegory became perceptible 
when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, from the 
circumstance of Peckham's unfurling a silken banner that 
fanned heaven and earth with the words " The Peckham Life- 
Boat." No boat being in attendance, though life, in the like- 
ness of "a gallant, gallant crew," in nautical uniform followed 



424 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Feckhara is de- 
scribed by geographers as an inland settlement with no larger 
or nearer shore line than the towing-path of the Surrey Canal, 
on which stormy station I had been given to understand no 
Life-Boat exists. Thus I deduced an allegorical meaning, 
and came to the conclusion that if patriotic Peckham picked 
a peck of pickled poetry, this ivas the peck of pickled poetry 
which patriotic Peckham picked. 

I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the 
whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expres- 
sion with a direct meaning, which I will now explain. It in- 
volves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of Teeto- 
talism by its own tests. 

There were many people on foot, and many people in 
vehicles of various kinds. The former were pleasant to see, 
and the latter were not pleasant to see : for the reason that I 
never, on any occasion or under any circumstances, have be- 
held heavier over-loading of horses than in this public show. 
Unless the imposition of a great van laden with from ten to 
twenty people on a single horse be a moderate tasking of the 
poor creature then the Temperate use of horses was immod- 
erate and cruel. From the smallest and lightest horse to the 
largest and heaviest, there were many instances in which the 
beast of burden was so shamefully overladen, that the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have frequently in- 
terposed in less gross cases. 

Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there 
unquestionably is, such a thing as Use without Abuse, and 
that therefore the Total Abolitionists are irrational and wrong- 
headed. But the procession completely converted me. For 
so large a number of the people using draught-horses in it 
were clearly unable to use them without Abusing them, that 
I perceived Total Abstinence from Horseflesh to be the only 
remedy of which the case admitted. As it is all one to Tee- 
totallers whether you take half a pint of beer or half a gallon, 
so it was all one here whether the beast of burden were a pony 



A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 425 

or a cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the special strength 
that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much suffering as 
the half-gallon quadruped. Moral : Total Abstinence from 
Horseflesh through the whole length and breadth of the scale. 
This Pledge will be in course of administration to all Teetotal 
processionists, not pedestrians, at the publishing office of All 
THE Year Round, on the first day of April, One Thousand 
Eight hundred and Seventy. 

Observe a point for consideration. This procession com- 
prised many persons, in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts, 
barouches, chaises, and what not, who were merciful to the 
dumb beasts that drew them, and did not overcharge their 
strength. What is to be done with those unoffending persons ? 
I will not run amuck and vilify and defame them, as Teetotal 
tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the question 
were one of drinking instead of driving ; I merely ask what 
is to be done with them ? The reply admits of no dispute 
whatever. Manifestly, in strict accordance with Teetotal 
Doctrines, they must come in, too, and take the Total Absti- 
nence from Horseflesh Pledge. It is not pretended that those 
members of the procession misused certain auxiliaries which 
in most countries and all ages have been bestowed upon man 
for his use, but it is undeniable tliat other members of the pro- 
cession did. Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the less 
includes the greater ; that the guilty include the innocent, the 
blind the seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the speaking, 
the drunken the sober. If any of the moderate users of 
draught-cattle in question should deem that there is any gentle 
violence done to their reason by these elements of logic, they 
are invited to come out of the procession next Whitsuntide, 
and look at it from my window. 



FULL REPORT 

OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

We have made the most unparalleled and extraordinary 
exertions to place before our readers a complete and accu- 
rate account of the proceedings at the late grand meeting 
of the Mudfog Association, holden in the town of Mudfog; 
it affords us great happiness to lay the result before them, 
in the shape of various communications received from our 
able, talented, and graphic correspondent, expressly sent 
down for the purpose, who has immortalized us, himself, 
Mudfog, and the association, all at one and the same time. 
We have been, indeed, for some da^^s unable to determine 
who will transmit the greatest name to posterity ; ourselves, 
who sent our correspondent down ; our correspondent, who 
wrote an account of the matter ; or the association, who 
gave our correspondent something to write about. We 
rather incline to the opinion that we are the greatest man 
of the party, inasmuch as the notion of an exclusive and 
authentic report originated with us ; this may be prejudice ; 
it may arise from a prepossession on our part in our own 
favor. Be it so. We have no doubt that every gentleman 
concerned in this mighty assemblage is troubled with the 
same complaint in a greater or less degree ; and it is a con- 
solation to us to know that we have at least this feeling in 
common with the great scientific stars, the brilliant and ex- 
traordinary luminaries, whose speculations we record. 

We give our correspondent's letters in the order in which 
they reached us. Any attempt at amalgamating them into 
(426) 



FIRST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 427 

one beautiful whole, would only destroy that glowing tone, 
that dash of wildness, and rich vein of picturesque interest, 
which pervade them throughout. 

^^Mudfog, Monday night, seven o'clock. 
" We are in a state of great excitement here. Nothing is 
spoken of, but the approaching meeting of the association. 
The inn-doors are thronged with waiters anxiously looking 
for the expected arrivals ; and the numerous bills which are 
wafered up in the windows of private houses, intimating 
that there are beds to let within, give the streets a very 
animated and cheerful appearance, the wafers being of a 
great variety of colors, and the monotony of printed inscrip- 
tions being relieved by every possible size and style of 
hand-writing. It is confidently rumored that Professors 
Snore, Doze, and Wheezy have engaged three beds and a 
sitting-room at the Pig and Tinder-Box. I give you the 
rumor as it has reached me ; but I cannot, as 3^et, vouch for 
its accuracy. The moment I have been enabled to obtain 
any certain information upon this interesting point, you 
may depend upon receiving it." 

^^Half-past seven. 
"I HAVE just returned from a personal interview with 
the landlord of the Pig and Tinder-box. He speaks con- 
fidently of the probability of Professors Snore, Doze, and 
Wheezy taking up their residence at his house during the 
sitting of the association, but denies that the beds have 
been yet engaged ; in which representation he is confirmed 
by the chambermaid, — a girl of artless manners, and inter- 
esting appearance. The boots denies that it is at all likely 
that Professors Snore, Doze, and Wheezy will put up here . 
but I have reason to believe that this man has been suborned 
b}" the proprietor of the Original Pig, which is the oppo- 
sition hotel. Amidst such conflicting testimony it is diffi- 
cult to arrive at the real truth ; but j^ou may depend upon 



428 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

receiving authentic information upon tliis point the moment 
the fact is ascertained. Tlie excitement still continues. 
A bo}^ fell through the window of the pastrycook's shop at 
the corner of the High-street about an hour ago, which has 
occasioned much confusion. The general impression is 
that it was an accident. Pray Heaven it may prove so !" 

" Tuesday, noon. 

"At an early hour this morning the bells of all the 
churches struck seven o'clock ; the effect of which, in the pres- 
ent lively state of the town, was extremely singular. While 
I was at breakfast, a yellow gig, drawn b}^ a dark grey horse, 
with a patch of white over his right eyelid, proceeded at a 
rapid pace in the direction of the Original Pig stables ; it is 
currentl}" reported that this gentleman has arrived here for 
the purpose of attending the association, and, from what I 
have heard, I consider it extremely probable, although 
nothing decisive is yet known regarding him. You may 
conceive the anxiety with which we are all looking forward 
to the arrival of the four o'clock coach this afternoon. 

"Notwithstanding the excited state of the populace, no 
outrage has yet been committed, owing to the admirable 
discipline and discretion of the police, who are nowhere to 
be seen. A barrel-organ is playing opposite my window, 
and groups of people, offering fish and vegetables for sale, 
parade the streets. With these exceptions everything is 
quiet, and I trust will continue so." 

"Five o^clock. 
" It is now ascertained be3^ond all doubt that Professors 
Snore, Doze and Wheezy will not repair to the Pig and 
Tinder-box, but have actually engaged apartments at the 
Original Pig. This intelligence is exclusive ; and I leave 
you and your readers to draw their own inferences from it. 
Why Professor Wheezy, of all people in the world, should 
repair to the Original Pig in preference to the Pig and 



FIRST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 429 

Tinder-box, it is not easy to conceive. The professor is a 
man who should be above all such petty feelings. Some 
people here, openly impute treachery and a distinct breach 
of faith to Professors Snore and Doze ; while others, again, 
are disposed to acquit them of any culpability in the trans- 
action, and to insinuate that the blame rests solely with 
'Professor Wheezy. I own that I incline to the latter 
opinion ; and, although it gives me great pain to speak in 
terms of censure or disapprobation of a man of such tran- 
scendent genius, and acquirements, still I am bound to say, 
that if my suspicions be well founded, and if all the reports 
which have reached my ears be true, I really do not well 
know what to make of the matter. 

" Mr. Slug, so celebrated for his statistical researches, 
arrived this afternoon by the four o'clock stage. His com- 
plexion is a dark purple, and he has a habit of sighing con- 
stantly. He looked extremel}^ well, and appeared in high 
health and spirits. Mr. Woodensconse also came down in 
the same conveyance. The distinguished gentleman was 
fast asleep on his arrival, and I am informed by the guard 
that he had been so, the whole way. He was, no doubt, 
preparing for his approaching fatigues ; but what gigantic 
visions must those be, that flit through the brain of such a 
man, when his body is in a state of torpidity ! 

" The influx of visitors increases every moment. I am told 
(I know not how truly) that two post-chaises have arrived 
at the Original Pig within the last half-hour ; and I myself 
observed a wheelbarrow, containing three carpet-bags and 
a bundle, entering the yard of the Pig and Tinder-box no 
longer ago than five minutes since. The people are still 
quietly pursuing their ordinary occupations ; but there is a 
wildness in their eyes, and an unwonted rigidity in the 
muscles of their countenances, which shows to the observant 
spectator that their expectations are strained to the very 
utmost pitch. I fear, unless some very extraordinary 
arrivals take place to-night, that consequences may arise 

27 



430 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

from this popular ferment, which every man of sense and 
feeling would deplore." 

" Twenty minutes past six. 
" I HAVE just heard that the boy who fell through the 
pastrycook's window last night, has died of the fright. He 
was suddenly called upon to pay three and sixpence for the 
damage done, and his constitution, it seems, was not strong 
enough to bear up against the shock. The inquest, it is 
said, will be held to-morrow." 

" Three-quarters past seven. 

"Professors Muff and Nogo have just driven up to the 
hotel door ; they at once ordered dinner with great conde- 
scension. We are all very much delighted with the urbanity of 
their manners, and the ease with which they adapt themselves 
to the forms and ceremonies of ordinary life. Immediately 
on their arrival they sent for the head-waiter, and privately 
requested him to purchase a live dog, — as cheap a one as he 
could meet with, — and to send him up after dinner, with a 
pie-board, a knife and fork, and a clean plate. It is con- 
jectured that some experiments will be tried upon the dog 
to-night ; if any particulars should transpire I will forward 
them b}^ express." 

" Half -past eight. 

" The animal has been procured. He is a pug-dog, of 
rather intelligent appearance, in good condition, and with 
very short legs. He has been tied to a curtain-peg in a 
dark room, and is howling dreadfully." 

" Ten minutes to nine. 
"The dog has just been ruug for. With an instinct 
which would appear almost the result of reason, the saga- 
cious animal seized the waiter by the calf of the leg when 
he approached to take him, and made a desperate, though 
Lieffectual resistance. I have not been able to procure 



FIRST MEETING-MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 431 

admission to the apartment occupied by the scientific gentle- 
men ; but, judging from the sounds which reached my ears 
when I stood upon the landing-place just now, outside the 
door, I should be disposed to say that the dog had retreated 
growling beneath some article of furniture, and was keeping 
the professors at bay. This conjecture is confirmed by the 
testimony of the ostler, who, after peeping through the key- 
hole, assures me that he distinctly saw Professors Nogo on 
his knees, holding forth a small bottle of prussic acid, to 
which the animal, who was crouched beneath an arm-chair, 
obstinately declined to smell. You cannot imagine the 
feverish state of irritation we are in, lest the interests of 
science should be sacrificed to the prejudices of a brute 
creature, who is not endowed with sufficient sense to foresee 
the incalculable benefits which the whole human race may 
derive from so very slight a concession on his part." 

** Nine o^clock. 
" The dog's tail and ears have been sent down stairs to be 
washed ; from which circumstance we infer that the animal 
is no more. His forelegs have been delivered to the boots 
to be brushed, which strengthens the supposition." 

" Half after ten. 
" My feelings are so overpowered by what has taken place 
in the course of the last hour and a half, that I have 
scarcely strength to detail the rapid succession of events 
which have quite bewildered all those who are cognizant of 
their occurrence. It appears that the pug-dog mentioned 
in my last was surreptitiously obtained, — stolen, in fact, — 
by some person attached to the stable department, from an 
unmarried lady resident in this town. Frantic on discover- 
ing the loss of her favorite, the lady rushed distractedly 
into the street, calling in the most heart-rending and pathetic 
manner upon the passengers to restore her, her Augustus, 
— for so the deceased was named, in affectionate remem- 



432 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

brance of a former lover of his mistress, to whom he bore a 
striking personal resemblance, which renders the circum- 
stance additionally affecting. I am not yet in a condition 
to inform you what circumstances induced the bereaved 
lady to direct her steps to the hotel which had witnessed the 
last struggles of her protege. I can only state that she 
arrived there, at the very instant when his detached mem- 
bers were passing through the passage on a small tray. 
Her shrieks still reverberate in my ears ! I grieve to say 
that the expressive features of Professor Muff were much 
scratched and lacerated by the injured lady; and that 
Professor Nogo, besides sustaining several severe bites, 
has lost some handfuls of hair from the same cause. It 
must be some consolation to these gentlemen to know that 
their ardent attachment to scientific pursuits has alone 
occasioned these unpleasant consequences ; for which the 
sympathy of a grateful country will sufficiently reward 
them. The unfortunate lady remains at the Pig and Tin- 
der-box, and up to this time is reported in a very pecarious 
state. 

''I need scarcely tell you that this unlooked-for catastro- 
phe has cast a damp and gloom upon us in the midst of our 
exhilaration ; natural in any case, but greatly enhanced in 
this, by the amiable qualities of the deceased amimal, who 
appears to have been much and deservedly respected by the 
whole of his acquaintance." 

" Twelve o'clock. 

" I TAKE the last opportunity before sealing my parcel to 
inform you that the boy who fell through the pastry-cook's 
window is not dead, as was universally believed, but alive 
and well. The report appears to have had its origin in his 
mysterious disappearance. He was found half an hour 
since on the premises of a sweet-stuff maker, where a raffle 
had been announced for a second-hand seal-skin cap and a 
tambourine ; and where — a sufficient number of members 
not having been obtained at first — he had patiently waited 



FIRST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 433 

until the list was completed. This fortunate discovery has 
in some degree restored our gayety and cheerfulness. It is 
proposed to get up a subscription for him without delay. 

" Everybody is nervously anxious to see what to-morrow 
will bring forth. If any one should arrive in the course of 
the night, I have left strict directions to be called immedi- 
ately. I should have sat up, indeed, but the agitating 
events of this day have been too much for me. 

'* No news yet, of either of the Professors Snore, Doze, or 
Wheezy. It is very strange I" 

" Wednesday afternoon. 

"All is now over : and, upon one point at least, I am at 
length enabled to set the minds of your readers at rest. The 
three professors arrived at ten minutes after two o'clock, 
and, instead of taking up their quarters at the Original Pig, 
as it was universally understood in the course of yesterday 
that they would assuredly have done, drove straight 
to the Pig and Tinder-box, where they threw off the mask 
at once, and openly announced their intention of remaining. 
Professor Wheezy may reconcile this very extraordinary 
conduct with his notions of fair and equitable dealing, but 
I would recommend Professor Wheezy to be cautious how 
he presumes too far upon his well-earned reputation. How 
such a man as Professor Snore, or, which is still more extra- 
ordinary, such an individual as Professor Doze, can quietly 
allow himself to be mixed up with such proceedings as these, 
3^ou will naturally inquire. Upon this head, rumor is silent ; 
I have my speculations, but forbear to give utterance to 
them just now." 

" Four o^ clock. 

" The town is filling fast ; eighteenpence has been offered 
for a bed and refused. Several gentlemen were under the 
necessity last night of sleeping in the brick-fields, and on 
the steps of doors, for which they were taken before the 
magistrates in a body this morning, and committed to prison 



434 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

as vagrants for various terms. One of these persons I 
understand to be a highly-respectable tinker, of great prac- 
tical skill, who had forwarded a paper to the president of 
Section D, Mechanical Science, on the construction of pip- 
kins with copper bottoms and safety-valves, of which report 
speaks highly. The incarceration of this gentleman is 
greatly to be regretted, as his absence will preclude any dis- 
cussion on the subject. 

" The bills are being taken down in all directions, and 
lodgings are being secured on almost any terms. I have 
heard of fifteen shillings a week for two rooms, exclusive of 
coals and attendance, but I can scarcely believe it. The 
excitement is dreadful. I was informed this morning that 
the civil authorities, apprehensive of some outbreak of 
popular feeling, had commanded a recruiting sergeant and 
two corporals to be under arms ; and that, with the view 
of not irritating the people unnecessarily by their presence, 
they had been requested to take up their position before 
daybreak in a turnpike, distant about a quarter of a mile 
from the town. The vigor and promptness of these measures 
cannot be too highly extolled. 

"Intelligence has just been brought me, that an elderly 
female, in a state of inebriet}^, has declared in the open street 
her intention to * do' for Mr. Slug. Some statistical returns 
compiled by that gentleman, relative to the consumption of 
raw spirituous liquors in this place, are supposed to be the 
cause of the wretch's animosity. It is added, that this 
declaration was loudly cheered by a crowd of persons who 
had assembled on the spot ; and that one man had the bold- 
ness to designate Mr. Slug aloud by the opprobrious epithet 
of ' Stick-in-the-mud I' It is earnestly to be hoped that now, 
when the moment has arrived for their interference, the 
magistrates will not shrink from the exercise of that power 
which is vested in them by the constitution of our common 
country.'' 



FIKST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 435 

*' Half -past ten. 
" The disturbance, I am happy to inform you, has been 
completely quelled, and the ringleader taken into custody. 
She had a pail of cold water thrown over her, previous to being 
locked up and expresses great contrition and uneasiness. 
We are all in a fever of anticipation about to-morrow ; but, 
now that we are within a few hours of the meeting of the 
association, and at last enjoy the proud consciousness of 
having its illustrious members amongst us, I trust and hope 
everything may go off peaceably. I shall send you a full 
report of to-morrow's proceedings by the night coach." 

" Eleven o^ clock. 
" I OPEN my letter to say that nothing whatever has 
occurred since I folded it up." 

" Thursday. 
" The sun rose this morning at the usual hour. I did 
not observe anj'^thing particular in the aspect of the glorious 
planet, except that he appeared to me (it might have been 
a dehision of my heightened fancy) to shine with more than 
common brilliancy, and to shed a refulgent lustre upon the 
town, such as I had never observed before. This is the 
more extraordinary, as the sky was perfectly cloudless, and 
the atmosphere peculiarly fine. At half-past nine o'clock 
the general committee assembled, with the last year's presi- 
dent in the chair. The report of the council was read ; and 
one passage, which stated that the council had corresponded 
with no less than three thousand five hundred and seventy- 
one persons, (all of whom paid their own postage,) on no 
fewer than seven thousand two hundred and forty-three 
topics, was received with a degree of enthusiasm which no 
etfort could suppress. The various committees and sections 
having been appointed, and the mere formal business trans- 
acted, the great proceedings of the meeting commenced at 



436 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

eleven o'clock precisely. I had the happiness of occupying 
a most eligible position at that time, in 

" SECTION A. — ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 
"GREAT ROOM, PIG AND TINDER-BOX. 
"PRESIDENT — PROFESSOR SNORE. VICE-PRESIDENTS — 
" PROFESSORS DOZE AND WHEEZY. 

" The scene at this moment was particularly striking. 
The sun streamed through the windows of the apartments, 
and tinted the whole scene with its brilliant rays, bringing 
out in strong relief the noble visages of the professors and 
scientific gentlemen, who, some with bald heads, some with 
red heads, some with brown heads, some with grey hends, 
some with black heads, some with block heads, presented a 
coup-d^oeil which no ej^e-witness will readily forget In front 
of these gentlemen were papers and inkstands ; and round 
the room, on elevated benches extending as far as the forms 
could reach, were assembled a brilliant concourse of those 
lovely and elegant women for which Mudfog is justly ac- 
knowledged to be without a rival in the whole world. The 
contrast between their fair faces and the dark coats and 
trousers of the scientific gentlemen I shall never cease to 
remember while Memory holds her seat. 

" Time having been allowed for a slight confusion, occa- 
sioned by the falling down of the greater part of the plat- 
forms, to subside, the president called on one of the 
secretaries to read a communication entitled, ' Some remarks 
on the industrious fleas, with considerations on the import- 
ance of establishing infant schools among that numerous 
class of society ; of directing their industry to useful and 
practical ends ; and of applying the surplus fruits thereof, 
towards providing for them a comfortable and respectable 
maintenance in their old age.' 

" The Author stated, that, having long turned his atten- 
tion to the moral and social condition of these interesting 
animals, he had been induced to visit an exhibition in Regent 



FIRST MEETING-MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 43Y 

street, London, commonly known by the designation of 
'The Industrious Fleas.' He had there seen many fleas, 
occupied certainly in various pursuits and avocations, hut 
occupied, he was bound to add, in a manner which no man 
of well-rei^ulated mind could fail to reojard with sorrow and 
regret. One flea, reduced to the level of a beast of burden, 
was drawing about a miniature gig, containing a particularly 
small effigy of his Grace the Duke of Wellington ; while 
another was staggering beneath the weight of a golden 
model of his great adversary Napoleon Bonaparte. Some 
brought up as mountebanks and ballet-dancers, were per- 
forming a figure-dance (he regretted to observe, that, of the 
fleas so employed, several were females) ; others were in 
training, in a small card-board box, for pedestrians, — mere 
sporting characters — and two were actually engaged in the 
cold-blooded and barbarous occupation of duelling ; a pur- 
suit from which humanity recoiled with horror and disgust. 
He suggested that measures should be immediately taken 
to employ the labor of these fleas as part and parcel of the 
productive power of the country, which might easily be 
done by the establishment among them of infant schools 
and houses of industry, in which a system of virtuous educa- 
tion, based upon sound principles, should be observed, and 
moral precepts strictly inculcated. He proposed that everj^ 
flea who presumed to exhibit, for hire, music or dancing, or 
any species of theatrical entertainment, without a license, 
should be considered a vagabond, and treated accordingly ; 
in which respect he only placed him upon a level with the 
rest of mankind. He would further suggest that their labor 
should be placed under the control and regulation of the 
State, who should set apart from the profits, a fund for the 
support of superannuated or disabled fleas, their widows and 
orphans. With this view, he proposed that liberal premiums 
should be offered for the three best designs for a general 
almshouse ; from which — as insect architecture was well 
known to be in a very advanced and perfect state — we 



438 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

might possibly derive many valuable hints for the improve- 
ment of our metropolitan universities, national galleries, 
and other public edifices. 

" The President wished to be informed how the in- 
genious gentleman proposed to open a communication with 
fleas generally, in the first instance, so that they might be 
thoroughly imbued with a sense of the advantages they 
must necessarily derive from changing their mode of life, 
and apply themselves to honest labor. This appeared to 
him, the only difficult}^ 

" The Author submitted that this difficulty was easily 
overcome, or rather that there was no difficulty at all in the 
case. Obviously the course to be pursued, if her Majest^^'s 
government could be prevailed upon to take up the plan, 
would be, to secure at a remunerative salary the individual 
to whom he had alluded as presiding over the exhibition in 
Regent street at the period of his visit. That gentleman 
would at once be able to put himself in communication with 
the mass of the fleas, and to instruct them in pursuance of 
some general plan of education, to be sanctioned bj^ Parlia- 
ment, until such time as the more intelligent among them 
were advanced enough to officiate as teachers to the rest. 

" The President and several members of the section 
highly complimented the author of the paper last read, on 
his most ingenious and important treatise. It was deter- 
mined that the subject should be recommended to the im- 
mediate consideration of the council. 

" Mr. Wigsby produced a cauliflower somewhat larger 
than a chaise-umbrella, which had been raised b}^ no other 
artificial means than the simple application of highly car- 
bonated soda-water as manure. He explained that by 
scooping out the head, which would afford a new and 
delicious species of nourishment for the poor, a parachute, 
in principle something similar to that constructed by M. 
Garnerin, was at once obtained : the stalk of course being 
kept downwards. He added that he was perfectly willing 



FIRST MEETING— MITDFOa ASSOCIATION. 439 

to make a descent from a height of not less than three miles 
and a quarter ; and had in fact already proposed the same 
to the proprietors of the Yauxhall Gardens, who in the 
handsomest manner at once consented to his wishes, and 
appointed an early day next summer for the undertaking ; 
merely stipulating that the rim of the cauliflower should be 
previously broken in three or four places to ensure the safety 
of the descent. 

" The President congratulated the public on the grand 
gala in store for them, and warmly eulogized the proprietors 
of the establishment alluded to, for their love of science, 
and regard for the safety of human life, both of which did 
them the highest honor. 

" A Member wished to know how many thousand addi- 
tional lamps the royal property would be illuminated with, 
on the night after the descent. 

" Mr. Wigsby replied that the point was not yet finally 
decided ; but he believed it was proposed, over and above 
the ordinar}^ illuminations, to exhibit in various devices 
eight millions and a half of additional lamps. 

" The Member expressed himself much gratified with this 
announcement. 

**Mr. Blunderum delighted the section with a most 
interesting and valuable paper * on the last moments of 
the learned pig,' which produced a very strong impression 
upon the assembly, the account being compiled from the 
personal recollections of his favorite attendant. The 
account stated in the most emphatic terms that the animaPs 
name was not Toby, but Solomon ; and distinctl}^ proved 
that he could have no near relatives in the profession, as 
man}^ designing persons had falsely stated, inasmuch as his 
father, mother, brothers and sisters, had all fallen victims 
to the butcher at difierent times. An uncle of his, indeed, 
had with yery great labor been traced to a sty in Somers 
Town ; but as he was in a very infirm state at the time, 
being afflicted with measles, and shortly afterwards disap- 



440 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

peared, there appeared too much reason to conjecture that 
he had been converted into sausages. The disorder of the 
learned pig was originally a severe cold, which, being aggra- 
vated by excessive trough indulgence, finally settled upon 
the lungs, and terminated in a general decay of the constitu- 
tion. A melancholy instance of a presentiment entertained 
by the animal of his approaching dissolution, was recorded. 
After gratifj'ing a numerous and fashionable compan37- with 
his performances, in which no falling-off whatever, was 
visible, he fixed his eyes on the biographer, and, turning to 
the watch which lay on the floor, and on which he was 
accustomed to point out the hour, deliberately passed his 
snout twice round the dial. In precisely four-and-twenty 
hours from that time he had ceased to exist ! 

" Professor Wheezy inquired whether, previous to his 
demise, the animal had expressed, b}^ signs or otherwise, 
any wishes regarding the disposal of his little property. 

" Mr. Blunderum replied, that, when the biographer took 
up the pack of cards at the conclusion of the performance, 
the animal grunted several times in a significant manner, 
and nodded his head as he was accustomed to do, when 
gratified. From these gestures it was understood that he 
wished the attendant to keep the cards, which he had ever 
since done. He had not expressed any wish relative to his 
watch, which had accordingly been pawned by the same 
individual. 

" The President wished to know whether any member 
of the section had ever seen or conversed with the pig-faced 
lady, who was reported to have worn a black velvet mask, 
and to have taken her meals from a golden trough. 

"After some hesitation a member replied that the pig- 
faced lady was his mother-in-law, and that he trusted the 
president would not violate the sanctity of private life. 

" The President begged pardon. He had considered the 
pig-faced lady a public character. Would the honorable 
member object to state, with a view to the advancement of 



FIRST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 441 

science, whether she was in any way connected with the 
learned pig ? 

" The member replied in the same low tone, that, as the 
question appeared to involve a suspicion that the learned 
pig might be his half-brother, he must decline answering it. 

" SECTION B. — ANATOMY AND MEDICINE. 

" COACH-HOUSE, PIG AND TINDER-BOX. 

" PRESIDENT — DR. TOORELL. VICE-PRESIDENTS — PROFESSORS 

MUFF AND NOGO. 

" Dr. Kutankumagen (of Moscow) read to the section a 
report of a case which had occurred within his own practice, 
strikingly illustrative of the power of medicine, as exempli- 
fied in his successful treatment of a virulent disorder. He 
had been called in to visit the patient on the 1 st of April, 
1837. He was then laboring under symptoms peculiarly 
alarming to any medical man. His frame was stout and 
muscular, his step firm and elastic, his cheeks plump and 
red, his voice loud, his appetite good, his pulse full and 
round. He was in the constant habit of eating three meals 
per diem, and of drinking at least one bottle of wine, and 
one glass of spirituous liquors diluted with water, in the 
course of the four-and-twenty hours. He laughed constantly, 
and in so hearty a manner that it was terrible to hear him. 
By dint of powerful medicine, low diet and bleeding, the 
symptoms in the course of three days perceptibly decreased. 
A rigid perseverance in the same course of treatment for 
only one week, accompanied with small doses of water- 
gruel, weak broth, and barley water, led to their entire dis- 
appearance. In the course of a month he was sufliiciently 
recovered to be carried down stairs by two nurses, and to 
enjo}^ an airing in a close carriage, supported b}^ soft pillows. 
At the present moment he was restored so far as to walk 
about, with the slight assistance of a crutch and a boy. It 
would perhaps be gratifying to the section to learn that he 



442 LIFE OF CHAKLES DICKENS. 

ate little, drank little, slept little, and was never heard to 
laugh by any accident whatever. 

'' Dr. W. R, Fee, in complimenting the honorable mem- 
ber upon the triumphant cure he had effected, begged to 
ask whether the patient still bled freely ? 

" Dr. Kutankumagen replied in the affirmative. 

"Dr. W. R. Fee. — And you found that he bled freely 
daring the whole course of the disorder? 

"Dr. Kutankumagen. — Oh dear, yes; most freel3^ 

" Dr. Neeshawts supposed, that if the patient had not 
submitted to be bled with great readiness and perseverance, 
so extraordinary a cure could never, in fact, have been 
accomplished. Dr. Kutankumagen rejoined, certainly not. 

" Mr Knight Bell (M R. C. S.) exhibited a wax prepa- 
ration of the interior of a gentleman who in early life had 
inadvertently swallowed a door-key. It was a curious fact 
that a medical student of dissipated habits, being present 
at the post mortem examination, found means to escape 
unobserved from the room, with that portion of the coats 
of the stomach upon which an exact model of the instru- 
ment was distinctly impressed, with which he hastened to a 
locksmith of doubtful character, who made a new key from 
the pattern so shown to him. With this key the medical 
student entered the house of the deceased gentleman, and 
committed a burglary to a large amount, for which he was 
subsequently tried and executed. 

" The President wished to know what became of the 
original key after the lapse of j^ears. Mr. Knight Bell re- 
plied that the gentleman was always much accustomed to 
punch, and it was supposed the acid had gradually de- 
voured it. 

" Dr. Neeshawts and several of the members were of 
opinion that the key must have lain very cold and heavy 
upon the gentleman^s stomach. 

" Mr. Knight Bell believed it did at first. It was worthy 
of remark, perhaps, that for some 3^ears the gentleman was 



FIRST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 443 

troubled with night-mare, under the Influence of which, he 
alwa3^s imagined himself a wine-cellar door. 

" Professor Muff related a very extraordinary and con- 
vincing proof of the wonderful efficacy of the system of in- 
finitesimal doses, which the section were doubtless aware 
was based upon the theory that the very minutest amount 
of any given' drug, properly dispersed through the human 
frame, would be productive of precisely the same result as 
a very large dose administered in the usual manner. Thus, 
the fortieth part of a grain of calomel was supposed to be 
equal to a five-grain calomel pill, and so on in proportion 
throughout the whole range of medicine. He had tried the 
experiment in a curious manner upon a publican who had 
been brought into the hospital with a broken head, and was 
cured upon the infinitesimal system in the incredibly short 
space of three months. This man was a hard drinker. He 
(Professor Muff) had dispersed three drops of rum through 
a bucket of water, and requested the man to drink the 
whole. Whfit was the result ? Before he had drunk a quart, 
he was in a state of beastly intoxication ; and five other men 
were made dead-drunk with the remainder. 

" The President wished to know whether an infinitesimal 
dose of soda water would have recovered them ? Professor 
Muff replied that the twenty-fifth part of a tea-spoonful, 
properly administered to each patient would have sobered 
him immediately. The President remarked that this was a 
most important discovery, and he hoped the Lord Ma^^or 
and Court of Aldermen would patronize it immediately. 

"A Member begged to be informed whether it would be 
possible to administer — say, the twentieth part of a grain 
of bread and cheese to all grown-up paupers, and the fortieth 
part to children, with the same satisfying effect as their 
present allowance. 

" Professor Muff was willing to stake his professional 
reputation on the perfect adequacy of such a quantity of 
food to the support of human life — in workhouses j the ad- 



444 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

dition of the fifteenth part of a grain of pudding twice a 
week, would render it a high diet. 

*' Professor Nogo called the attention of the section to a 
very extraordinary case of animal magnetism. A private 
watchman, being merely looked at by the operator from the 
opposite side of a wide street, was at once observed to be 
in a very drowsy and languid state. He was followed to 
his box, and being once slightly rubbed on the palms of the 
hands, fell into a sound sleep, in which he continued with- 
out intermission for ten hours. 

" section 0. — statistics, 
"hay-loft, original pig. 
" president — mr. woodensconse. vice-presidents — mr. 

LEDBRAIN and MR. TIMBERED. 

" Mr. Slug stated to the section the result of some calcu- 
lations he had made with great difficulty and labor, regard- 
ing the state of infant education among the middle classes 
of London. He found that, within a circle of three miles 
from the Elephant and Castle, the following were the 
names and numbers of children's books principally in circu- 
lation : — 

''Jack the Giant-kifier . . . .7,943 

Ditto and Bean-stalk . ... 8,621 

Ditto and Eleven Brothers . . . 2,845 

Ditto and Jill . ... 1,998 



Total . . 21,407 

" He found that the proportion of Robinson Crusoes to 
Philip Quarls was as four and a half to one ; and that the 
preponderance of Valentine and Orsons over Goody Two 
Shoeses was as three and an eighth of the former to half a 
one of the latter : a comparison of Seven Champions with 
Simple Simons gave the same result. The ignorance that 
prevailed, was lamentable. One child, on being asked 



FIRST MEETING-MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 445 

wlietber he would rather be Saint George of England or a 
respectable tallow-chandler, instantly replied, ' Taint George 
of Ingling.' Another, a little boy of eight years old, was 
found to be firmly impressed with a belief in the existence 
of dragons, and openly stated that it was his intention when 
he grew up, to rush forth sword in hand for the deliverance 
of captive princesses, and the promiscuous slaughter of 
giants. Not one child among the number interrogated had 
ever heard of Mungo Park, — some inquiring whether he 
was at all connected with the black man that swept the 
crossing ; and others whether he was in any way related to 
the Regent's Park. They had not the slightest conception 
of the commonest principles of mathematics, and considered 
Sinbad the Sailor the most enterprising voyager that the 
world had ever produced. 

"A Member strongly deprecating the use of all the other 
books mentioned, suggested that Jack and Jill might per- 
haps be exempted from the general censure, inasmuch as 
the hero and heroine, in the very outset of the tale, were 
depicted as going up a hill to fetch a pail of water, which 
was a laborious and useful occupation, — supposing the 
family linen w^as being washed, for instance. 

" Mr. Slug feared that the moral effect of this passage 

was more than counterbalanced b}' another in a subsequent 

part of the poem, in which very gross allusion was made to 

the mode in which the heroine was personally chastised by 

her mother 

** 'For laughing at Jack's disaster ;' 

besides, the whole work had this one great fault, it was not 
true. 

" The President complimented the honorable member on 
the excellent distinction he had drawn. Several other mem- 
bers, too, dwelt upon the immense and urgent necessity of 
storing the minds of children with nothing but facts and 
figures ; which process the President very forcibly remarked, 
had made them (the section) the men they were. 

28 



446 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

"Mr. Slug then stated some curious calculations respect- 
ing the dogs'-meat barrows of London. He found that the 
total number of small carts and barrows engaged in dispen- 
sing provisions to the cats and dogs of the metropolis, was 
one thousand seven hundred and forty-three. The average 
number of skewers delivered daily with the provender, by 
each dogs'-meat cart or barrow was thirty-six. Now, multi- 
plying the number of skewers so delivered, by the number 
of barrows, a total of sixt3^-two thousand seven hundred and 
forty-eight skewers daily would be obtained. Allowing that, 
of these sixtj-two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight 
skewers, the odd two thousand seven hundred and forty- 
eight were accidentally devoured with the meat, by the 
most voracious of the animals supplied, it followed that 
sixty thousand skewers per day, or the enormous number 
of twenty -one millions nine hundred thousand skewers 
annuall}'-, were wasted in the kennels and dust-holes of Lon- 
don ; which, if collected and warehoused, would in ten 3-ears' 
time afford a mass of timber more than sufficient for the 
construction of a first-rate vessel of war for the use of her 
majesty's navy, to be called * The Royal Skewer,' and to 
become under that name the terror of all the enemies of this 
island. 

" Mr. X. Ledbrain read a very ingenious communication, 
from which it appeared that the total number of legs belong- 
ing to the manufacturing population of one great town in 
Yorkshire was, in round numbers, fort}^ thousand, while the 
total number of chair and stool legs in their houses was 
only thirty thousand, which, upon the very favorable aver- 
age of three legs to a seat, jielded only ten thousand seats 
in all. From this calculation it would appear, — not taking 
wooden or cork le^s into the account, but allowins^ two leos 
to ever}^ person, — that ten thousand individuals (one-half 
of the whole population) were either destitute of any rest 
for their legs at all, or passed the whole of their leisure time 
in sitting upon boxes. 



FIRST MEETING — MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 447 

"section d.— mechanical science, 
"coach house, original pig. 

"president — MR, carter. VICE-PRESIDENTS MR. TRUCK AND 
MR. WAGHORN. 

" Professor Queerspeck exhibited an elegant model of a 
portable railway, neatly mounted in a green case, for the 
waistcoat pocket. By attaching this beautiful instrument 
to his boots, any Bank or public-office clerk could transport 
himself from his place of residence to his place of business, 
at the easy rate of sixty-five miles an hour, which, to gentle- 
men of sedentary pursuits, would be an incalculable ad- 
vantage. 

" The President was desirous of knowing whether it was 
necessary to have a level surface on which the gentleman 
was to run. 

" Professor Queerspeck explained that City gentlemen 
would run in trains, being handcuffed together to prevent 
confusion or unpleasantness. For instance, trains would 
start every morning at eight, nine, and ten o'clock, from 
Camden Town, Islington, Camberwell, Hackney, and various 
other places in which City gentlemen are accustomed to re- 
side. It would be necessary to have a level, but he had 
provided for this difficulty by proposing that the best line 
that the circumstances would admit of, should be taken 
through the sewers which undermine the streets of the 
metropolis, and which, well lighted by jets from the gas- 
pipes which run immediately above them, would form a 
pleasant and commodious arcade, especially in winter-time, 
when the inconvenient custom of carrjnng umbrellas, now 
general, could be wholly dispensed with. In reply to 
another question. Professor Queerspeck stated that no sub- 
stitute for the purposes to which these arcades were at 
present devoted had yet occurred to him, but that he hoped 
no fanciful objection on this head would be allowed to inter- 
fere with so great an undertaking. 



448 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

"Mr. Jobba produced a forcing-machine on a novel plan, 
for bringing joint-stock railway shares prematurely to a 
premium. The instrument was in the form of an elegant 
gilt weather glass of most dazzling appearance, and was 
worked behind, by strings, after the manner of a pantomime 
trick, the strings being always pulled by the directors of 
of the company to which the machine belonged. The quick- 
silver was so ingeniously placed, that when the acting di- 
rectors held shares in their pockets, figures denoting very 
small expenses and very large returns appeared upon the 
glass ; but the moment the directors parted with these 
pieces of paper, the estimate of needful expenditure sud- 
denl}^ increased itself to an immense extent, while the state- 
ments of certain profits became reduced in the same propor- 
tion. Mr. Jobba stated that the machine had been in 
constant requisition for some months past, and he had never 
once known it to fail. 

"A Member expressed his opinion that it was extremely 
neat and pretty. He wished to know whether it was not 
liable to accidental derangement ? Mr. Jobba said that the 
whole machine was undoubtedly liable to be blown up, but 
that was the only objection to it. 

" Professor Nogo arrived from the anatomical section to 
exhibit a model of a safety fire-escape, which could be fixed 
at any time, in less than half an hour, and by means of 
which, the youngest or most infirm persons (successfully 
resisting the progress of the flames until it was quite ready) 
could be preserved if they merely balanced themselves for a 
few minutes on the sill of their bed-room window, and got 
into the escape without falling into the street. The Pro- 
fessor stated that the number of boj^s who had been rescued 
in the day-time by this machine from houses which were 
not on fire, was almost incredible. Not a conflagration had 
occurred in the whole of London for many months past to 
which the escape had not been carried on the very next day, 
and put in action before a concourse of persons. 



FIRST MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 449 

" The President inquired whether there was not some 
difficulty in ascertaining which was the top of the machine, 
and which the bottom, in cases of pressing emergency ? 

" Professor Nogo explained that of course it could not 
be expected to act quite as well when there was a fire, as 
when there was not a fire ; but in the former case he thought 
it would be of equal service whether the to}) were up or 
down.'^ 



With the last section, our correspondent concludes his 
most able and faithful report, which will never cease to re- 
flect credit upon him for his scientific attainments, and upon 
us for our enterprising spirit. It is needless to take a re- 
view of the subjects which have been discussed ; of the mode 
in which they have been examined; of the great truths 
which they have elicited. The}^ are now before the world, 
and we leave them to read, to consider, and to profit. 

The place of meeting for next year has undergone discus- 
sion, and has at length been decided ; regard being had to, 
and evidence being taken upon, the goodness of its wines, 
the supply of its markets, the hospitality of its inhabitants, 
and the quality of its hotels. We hope at this next meet- 
ing our correspondent may again be present, and that we 
may be once more the means of placing his communications 
before the world. Until that period we have been prevailed 
upon to allow this number of our Miscellany to be retailed 
to the public, or wholesaled to the trade, without any ad- 
vance upon our usual price. 

We have only to add, that the committees are now broken 
up, and that Mudfog is once again restored to its accus- 
tomed tranquillity, — that Professors and Members have had 
balls, and soirees, and suppers, and great mutual compli- 
mentations, and have at length dispersed to their several 
homes, ■ — whither all good wishes and joys attend them, until 
next year I 



FULL REPORT 

OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE 
ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

In October last, we did ourselves the immortal credit of re- 
cording, at an enormous expense, and by dint of exertions 
unparalleled in the history of periodical publications, the pro- 
ceedings of the Mudfog Association for the advancement of 
Everything, which in that month held its first great half-yearly 
meeting, to the wonder and delight of the whole empire. 
We announced at the conclusion of that extraordinary and 
most remarkable Report, that when the Second Meeting of the 
Society should take place we should be found again at our post 
renewing our gigantic and spirited endeavors, and once more 
making the world ring with the accuracy, authenticity, im- 
measurable superiority, and intense remarkability of our ac- 
count of its proceedings. In redemption of this pledge, wo 
caused to be despatched per steam to Oldcastle, at which place 
this second meeting of the Society was held on the 20th instant, 
the same superhumanly-endowed gentleman who furnished the 
former report, and who, — gifted by nature with transcendent 
abilities, and furnished by us with a body of assistants scarcely 
inferior to himself, — has forwarded a series of letters, which 
for faithfulness of description, power of language, fervor of 
thought, happiness of expression, and importance of subject- 
matter, have no equal in the epistolary literature of any age 
or country. We give this gentleman's correspondence entire, 
and in the order in which it reached our office. 

" Saloon of Steamer, Thursday night, half-past eight. 

" When I left New Burlington street this evening in the 
hacknev cabriolet, number four thousand two hundred and 
(450) 



SECOND MEETING-MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 451 

eighty-five, I experienced sensations as novel as they were op- 
pressive. A sense of importance of the task I had undertaken, 
a consciousness that I was leaving London, and stranger still, 
going somewhere else, a feeling of loneliness and a sensation 
of jolting quite bewildered my thoughts and for a time ren- 
dered me even insensible to the presence of my carpet-bag 
and hat-box. I shall ever feel grateful to the driver of a Black- 
wall omnibus, who, by thrusting the pole of his vehicle 
through the small door of the cabriolet, awakened me from a 
tumult of imaginings that are wholly indescribable. But of 
such materials is our imperfect nature composed ! 

" I am happy to say that I am the first passenger on board 
and shall thus be enabled to give you an account of all that 
happens in the order of its occurrence. The chimney is smok- 
ing a good deal and so are the crew ; and the captain, I am 
informed, is very drunk in a little house upon the deck, some- 
thing like a black turnpike. I should infer from all I hear that 
he has got the steam up. 

" You will readily guess with what feelings I have just made 
the discovery that my berth is in the same closet with those 
engaged by Professor Woodensconce, Mr. Slug, and Profes- 
sor Grime. Professor Woodensconce has taken the shelf 
above me, and Mr. Slug and Professor Grime the two shelves 
opposite. Their luggage has already arrived. On Mr. Slug's 
bed is a long tin tube of about three inches in diameter, care- 
fully closed at both ends. What can this contain ? Some 
powerful instrument of a new construction doubtless." 



" Ten minutes past nine. 
"Nobody has yet arrived, nor has anything fresh come in 
my way except several joints of beef and mutton, from which 
I conclude that a good plain dinner has been provided for to- 
morrow. There is a singular smell below, which gave me 
some uneasiness at first ; but as the steward says it is always 
there, and never goes away, I am quite comfortable again. 
I learn from this man that the different sections will be dis- 



452 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

tributed at the Black Boy and Stomach-ache, and the Boot-jack 
and Countenance. If this intelligence be true, and I have no 
reason to doubt it, your readers will draw such conclusions as 
their different opinions may suggest. 

''I write down these remarks as they occur to me, or as 
the facts come to my knowledge, in order that my first im- 
pressions may lose nothing of their original vividness. I shall 
despatch them in small packets as opportunities arise." 

" Half -past nine. 
" Some dark object has just appeared upon the wharf. I 
think it is a travelling carriage." 

" A quarter to ten. 
" No, it isn't." 

" Half -past ten. 

" The passengers are pouring in every instant. Four omni- 
busesful have just arrived upon the wharf, and all is bustle 
and activity. The noise and confusion are very great. Cloths 
are laid in the cabins, and the steward is placing blue plates- 
full of knobs of cheese at equal distances down the centre of 
the tables. He drops a great many knobs ; but being used 
to it, picks them up again with great dexterity, and after wip- 
ing them on his sleeve, throws them back into the plates. He 
is a young man of exceedingly prepossessing appearance, — 
either dirty or a mulatto, but I think the former. 

" An interesting old gentleman who came to the wharf in 
an omnibus has just quarrelled violently with the porters, and 
is staggering towards the vessel with a large trunk in his arras. 
I trust and hope that he may reach it in safety ; but the board 
he has to cross is narrow and slippery. Was that a splash ? 
Gracious powers ! 

" I have just returned from the deck. The trunk is standing 
upon the extreme brink of the wharf, but the old gentleman is 
nowhere to be seen. The watchman is not sure whether he 
went down or not, but promises to drag for him the first thing 
to-morrow morning. May his humane efforts prove successful 1 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 453 

" Professor Nogo has this moment arrived with his nightcap 
on under his hat. He has ordered a glass of cold brandy and 
water, with a hard biscuit and a basin, and has gone straight 
to bed. What can this mean ? 

" The three other scientific gentlemen to whom I have already 
alluded have come on board, and have all tried their beds, with 
the exception of Professor Woodensconce, who sleeps in one 
of the top ones, and can't get into it. Mr. Slug, who sleeps 
in the other top one, is unable to get out of his, and is to have 
his supper handed up by a boy. I have had the honor to 
introduce myself to these gentlemen, and we have amicably 
arranged the order in which we shall retire to rest ; which it is 
necessary to agree upon, because although the cabin is very 
comfortable, there is not room for more than one gentleman to 
be out of bed at a time, and even he must take his boots off ia 
the passage. 

" As I anticipated, the knobs of cheese were provided for 
the passengers' supper, and are now in course of consumption. 
Your readers will be surprised to hear that Professor Wooden- 
sconce has abstained from cheese for eight years, although he 
takes butter in considerable quantities. Professor Grime hav- 
ing lost several teeth, is unable I observe to eat his crusts 
without previously soaking them in his bottled porter. How 
interesting are these peculiarities I" 

*^ Half -past eleven. 

" Professors Woodensconce and Grime, with a degree of 
good humor that delights us all, have just arranged to toss for 
a bottle of mulled port. There has been some discussion 
whether the payment should be decided by the first toss or the 
best out of three. Eventually the latter course has been 
determined on. Deeply do I vvish that both gentlemen could 
win ; but that being impossible, I own that my personal aspi- 
rations, I speak as an individual, and do not compromise either 
you or your readers by this expression of feeling, are with 
Professor Woodensconce. I have backed that gentleman to 
the amount of eighteenpence." 



454 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

" Twenty minutes to twelve. 

*' Professor Grime has inadvertently tossed his half-crown 
out of one of the cabin-windows, and it has been arranged the 
steward shall toss for him. Bets are offered on any side to any 
amount, but there are no takers. 

" Professor Woodensconce has just called 'woman ;' but the 
coin having lodged in a beam is a long time coming down again. 
The interest and suspense of this one moment are beyond 
anything that can be imagined." 

" Twelve o^clock. 
" The mulled port is smoking on the table befjre me, and 
Professor Grime has won. Tossing is a game of chance ; but 
on every ground, whether of public or private character, intel- 
lectual endowments, or scientific attainments, I cannot help 
expressing my opinion that Professor Woodensconce ought to 
have come off victorious. There is an exultation about Pro- 
fessor Grime incompatible I fear with greatness." 

" A quarter past twelve. 
" Professor Grime continues to exult, and to boast of his 
victory in no very measured terms, observing that he always 
does win, and that he knew it would be a ' head' before hand, 
with many other remarks of a similar nature. Surely this 
gentleman is not so lost to every feeling of decency and pro- 
priety as not to feel and know the superiority of Professor 
Woodensconce. Is Professor Grime insane ? or does he wish 
to be reminded in plain language of his true position in society, 
and the precise level of his acquirements and abilities ? Pro- 
fessor Grime will do well to look to this." 

" One o^clock. 
" I AM writing in bed. The small cabin is illuminated by 
the feeble light of a flickering lamp suspended from the ceiling; 
Professor Grime is lying on the opposite shelf on the broad 
of his back, with his mouth wide open The scene is inde- 
scribably solemn. The ripple of the tide, the noise of the 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 455 

sailors' feet over-head, the gruff voices on the river, the dogs 
on the shore, the snoring of the passengers, and a constant 
creaking of every plank in the vessel, are the only sounds that 
meet the ear. With these exceptions, all is profound silence. 
"My curiosity has been within the last moment very much 
excited. Mr. Slug, who lies above Professor Grime, has 
cautiouwsly withdrawn the curtains of his berth, and after 
looking anxiously out, as if to satisfy himself that his com- 
panions are asleep, has taken up the tin tube of which I have 
before spoken, and is regarding it with great interest. What 
rare mechanical combinations can be obtained in that mysteri- 
ous case ? It is evidently a profound secret to all." 

" A quarter past one. 
" The behavior of Mr. Slug grows more and more mys- 
terious. He has unscrewed the top of the tube, and now 
renews his observation upon his companions ; evidently to 
make sure that he is wholly unobserved. He is clearly on the 
eve of some great experiment. Pray heaven that it be not a 
dangerous one ; but the interests of science must be promoted, 
and I am prepared for the worst. " 

" Five minutes later. 
" He has produced a large pair of scissors, and drawn a roll 
of some substance, not unlike parchment in appearance, from 
the tin case. The experiment is about to begin. I must 
strain my eyes to the utmost, in the attempt to follow its mi- 
nutest operation." 

" Twenty minutes before two. 
" I HAVE at length been enabled to ascertain that the tin 
tube contains a few yards of some celebrated plaster recom- 
mended — as I discover on regarding the label attentively 
through my eye-glass — as a preservative against sea-sickness. 
Mr. Slug has cut it up into small portions, and is now sticking 
it over himself in every direction." 



456 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

" Three o'clock. 

" Precisely a quarter of an hour ago we weighed anchor, 
and the machinery was suddenly put in motion with a noise 
so appalling, that Professor Woodensconce, who had ascended 
to his berth by means of a platform of carpet bags arranged by 
himself on geometrical principles, darted from his shelf head 
foremost, and gaining his feet with all the rapidity of extreme 
terror, ran wildly into the ladies' cabin, under the impression, 
that we were sinking, and uttering loud cries for aid. I am 
assured that the scene which ensued baffles all description. 
There were one hundred and forty-seven ladies in their re- 
spective berths at the time. 

**Mr. Slug has remarked, as an additional instance of the 
"extreme ingenuity of the steam-engine as applied to purposes 
of navigation, that in whatever part of the vessel a passen- 
ger's berth may be situated, the machinery always appears to 
be exactly under his pillow. He intends stating this very 
beautiful, though simple discovery, to the association." 

" Half -past three. 
" We are still in smooth water ; that is to say in as smooth 
water as a steam-vessel ever can be, for as Professor Wooden- 
sconce, who has just woke up, learnedly remarks, another 
great point of ingenuity about a steamer is, that it always 
carries a little storm with it. You can scarcely conceive how 
exciting the jerking pulsation of the ship becomes. It is a 
matter of positive difficulty to get to sleep." 

" Friday afternoon, six o^olonk. 

*' I REGRET to inform you that Mr. Slug's plaster has 
proved of no avail. He is in great agony, but has applied 
several large additional pieces notwithstanding. How affecting 
is this extreme devotion to science and pursuit of knowledge 
under the most trying circumstances ! 

" We were extremely happy this morning, and the break- 
fast was one of the most animated description. Nothing un- 



SECOND MEETING-MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 457 

pleasant occurred until noon, with the exception of Dr. 
Foxey's brown silk umbrella and white hat becoming en- 
tangled in the machinery while he was explaining to a knot of 
ladies the construction of the steam-engine. I fear the gravy 
soup for lunch was injudicious. We lost a great many passen- 
gers almost immediately afterwards." 

*' Ealf-past six. 
" I AM again in bed. Anything so heart-rending as Mr. 
Slug's sufferings it has never yet been my lot to witness." 

" Seven o^ clock. 

"A MESSENGER has just comc down for a clean pocket 
handkerchief from Professor Woodensconce's bag, that unfor- 
tunate gentleman being quite unable to leave the deck, and 
imploring constantly to be thrown overboard. From this man 
I understand that Professor Nogo, though in a state of utter 
exhaustion, chngs feebly to the hard biscuit and cold brandy 
and water, under the impression that they will yet restore him. 
Such is the triumph of mind over matter. 

" Professor Grime is in bed, to all appearance quite well ; 
but he will eat, and it is disagreeable to see him. Has this 
gentleman no sympathy with the sufferings of his fellow-crea- 
tures ? If he has, on what principle can he call for mutton- 
chops — and smile ?" 

" Black Boy and Stomach-ache, Oldcastle, Saturday noon, 

" You will be happy to learn that I have at length arrived 
here in safety. The town is excessively crowded, and all the 
private lodgings and hotels are filled with savans of both 
sexes. The tremendous aasemblages of intellect that one en- 
counters in every street is in the last degree overwhelming. 

" Notwithstanding the throng of people here, I have been 
fortunate enough to meet with very comfortable accommodation 
on very reasonable terms, having secured a sofa in the first 
floor passage at one guinea per night, which includes permis- 
sion to take my meals in the bar, on condition that I walk 



458 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

about the streets at all other times, to make room for other 
gentlemen similarly situated. I have been over the outhouses 
intended to be devoted to the reception of the various sec- 
tions, both here and at the Boot-jack and Countenance, and 
am much delighted with the arrangements. Nothing can ex- 
ceed the fresh appearance of the sawdust with which the 
floors are sprinkled. The forms are of unplaned deal, and 
the general effect, as you can well imagine, is extremely beau- 
tiful" 

" Half -past nine. 
" The number and rapidity of the arrivals are quite bewild- 
ering. Within the last ten minutes a stage coach has driven 
up to the door, filled inside and out with distinguished charac- 
ters, comprising Mr. Muddlebrains, Mr. Drawley, Professor 
Muff, Mr. X. Misty, Mr. X. X. Misty, Mr. Purblind, Professor 
Kummun, The Honorable and Reverend Mr. Long Ears, Pro- 
fessor John Ketch, Sir William Joltered, Doctor Buffer, Mr. 
Smith of London, Mr. Brown of Edenburg, Sir Hookham 
Snivey, and Professor Pumpkinskull. The last ten named 
gentlemen were wet through, and looked extremely intelligent." 

" Sunday, hvo o^cIock, p. M. 

"The Honorable and Reverend Mr. Long Ears, accompanied 
by Sir William Joltered, walked and drove this morning. 
They accomplished the former feat in boots, and the latter in 
a hired fly. This has naturally given rise to much discussion. 

" I have just learned that an interview has taken place at 
the Boot-Jack and Countenance between Sowster, the active 
and intelligent beadle of this place, and Professor Pumpkin- 
skull, who, as your readers are doubtless aware, is an influen- 
tial member of the council. I forbear to communicate any of 
the rumors to which this very extraordinary proceeding has 
given rise until I have seen Sowster, and endeavor to ascer- 
tain the truth from him." 

''Half-past six. 

" I ENGAGED a donkey-chaise shortly after writing the above, 
and proceeded at a brisk trot in the direction of Sowster's 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 459 

residence, passing through a beautiful expanse of country with 
red brick buildings on either side, and stopping in the market- 
place to observe the spot where Mr. Kwakley's hat was blown 
off yesterday. It is an uneven piece of paving, but has cer- 
tainly no appearance which would lead one to suppose that any 
such event had recently occurred there. From this point I pro- 
ceeded — passing the gas-works and tallow-melter's — to a lane 
which had been pointed out to me as the beadle's place of 
residence ; and before I had driven a dozen yards further, I 
had the good fortune to meet Sowster himself advancing 
towards me. 

" Sowster is a fat man, with a more enlarged development 
of that peculiar conformation of countenance which is vulgarly 
termed a double chin that I remember to have ever seen before. 
He has also a very red nose, which he attributes to a habit of 
early rising — so red, indeed, that but for this explanation I 
should have supposed it to proceed from occasional inebriety. 
He informed me that he did not feel himself at liberty to relate 
what had passed between himself and Professor Pumpkinskull, 
but had no objection to state that it was connected with a 
matter of police regulation, and added with peculiar signifi- 
cance, ' Never wos sitch times !' 

" You will easily believe that this intelligence gave me con- 
siderable surprise, not wholly unmixed with anxiety, and that 
I lost no time in waiting on Professor Pumpkinskull, and 
stating the object of my visit. After a few moments' reflec- 
tion, the Professor, who I am bound to say, behaved with the 
utmost politeness, openly avowed, I marked the passage in 
italics, that he had requested Sowster to attend on the Ilonday 
morning at the Boot-Jack and Countenance to keep off the 
boys ; and that he had further desired that the under-headle 
might he stationed, vnth the same object, at the Black Boy and 
Stomach-ache ! 

"Now, I leave this unconstitutional proceeding to your 
comments and the consideration of your readers. I have yet 
to learn that a beadle, without the precincts of a church, 



460 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

chiircli-yard or workhouse, and acting otherwise than under 
the express orders of churchwardens and overseers in council 
assembled, to enforce the law against people who come upon 
the parish, and other offenders, has any lawful authority what- 
ever over the rising youth of this country. I have yet to 
learn that a beadle can be called out by any civilian to exorcise 
a domination and despotism over the boys of Britain. 1 have 
yet to learn that a beadle will be permitted by the commis- 
sioners of poor law regulation to wear out the soles and heels 
of his boots in illegal interference with the liberties of people 
not proved poor or otherwise criminal. I have yet to learn 
that a beadle has power to stop up the Queen's highway at his 
will and pleasure, or that the whole width of the street is not 
free and open to any man, boy, or woman in existence, up to 
the very walls of the houses — ay, be they Black Boys and 
Stomach-aches, or Boot-jacks and Countenances, I care not." 

" Nine o^ clock. 

**1 HAVE procured a local artist to make a faithful sketch of 
the tyrant Sowster, which, as he has acquired this infamous 
celebrity, you will no doubt wish to have engraved for the 
purpose of presenting a copy with every copy of your next 
number. The under-beadle has consented to write his life, but 
it is to be strictly anonymous. 

" The likeness is of course from the life, and complete in 
every respect. Even if I had been totally ignorant of the 
man's real character, and it had been placed before me without- 
remark, I should have shuddered involuntarily. There is an 
intense malignity of expression in the features, and a baleful 
ferocity of purpose in the ruffian's eye, which appals and sickens. 
His whole air is rampant with cruelty, nor is the stomach less 
characteristic of his demoniac propensities. 

*' Monday. 

" The great day has at length arrived. I have neither eyes, 
nor ears, nor pens, nor ink, nor paper, for anything but the 
wonderful proceedings that have astounded my senses. Let 
me collect my energies and proceed to the account." 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 461 

SECTION A. — ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 

FRONT PARLOR, BLACK BOY AND STOMACH-ACHE. 

PRESIDENT — SIR WILLIAM JOLTERED. VICE-PRESIDENTS — MR. 

MUDDLEBRAINS AND MR. DRAWLEY. 

"Mr. X. X. Misty communicated some remarks on the 
disappearance of dancing bears from the streets of London, 
with observations on the exhibition of monkeys as connected 
with barrel-organs. The writer had obser^red with feelings 
of the utmost pain and regret, that some years ago a sudden 
and unaccountable change in the public taste took place with 
reference to itinerant bears, who being discountenanced by the 
populace, gradually fell off one by one from the streets of the 
metropolis, until not one remained to create a taste for natural 
history in the breasts of the poor and uninstructed. One bear 
indeed — a brown and ragged animal — had lingered about the 
haunts of his former triumphs, with a worn and dejected vis- 
age and feeble limbs, had had essayed to wield his quarter-staff 
for the amusement of the multitude ; but hunger and an utter 
want of any due recompense for his abilities, had at length 
driven him from the field, and it was only too probable that 
he had fallen a sacrifice to the rising taste for grease. He re- 
gretted to add that a similar and no less lamentable change, 
had taken place with reference to monkeys. Those delightful 
animals had formerly been almost as plentiful as the organs 
on the tops of which they were accustomed to sit ; the pro- 
portion in the year 1829 it appeared by the parliamentary 
return, being as one monkey to three organs. Owing how- 
ever to an altered taste in musical instruments and the substi- 
tution in a great measure of narrow boxes of music for organs, 
which left the monkeys nothing to sit upon, this source of 
public amusement was wholly dried up. Considering it a 
matter of the deepest importance in connection with national 
education, that the people should not lose such opportunities 
of making themselves acquainted with the manners and cus- 
toms of two most interesting species of animals, the author 

29 



402 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

submitted that some measures should be immediately taken 
for the restoration of those pleasing and truly intellectual 
amusements. 

"The President inquired by what means the honorable 
member proposed to attain ihis most desirable end ? 

" The Author submitted that it could be most fully and 
satifactorily accomplished, if Her Majesty's government would 
cause to be brought over to England, and maintained at the 
public expense, and for the public amusement, such jf'number 
of bears as would enable every quarter of the town to be 
visited — say at least by three bears a week. No difficulty 
whatever need be experienced in providing a fitting place for 
the reception of those animals, as a commodious bear-garden 
could be erected in the immediate neighborhood of both 
houses of Parliament ; obviously the most proper and eligible 
spot for such an establishment. 

" Professor Mull doubted very much whether any cor- 
rect ideas of natural history were propagated by the means to 
which the honorable member had so ably adverted. On the con- 
trary, he believed that they had been the means of diffusing 
very incorrect and imperfect notions on the subject. He 
spoke from personal observation and personal experience, when 
he said that many children of great abilities had been induced 
to believe, from what they had observed in the streets, at and 
before the period to which the honorable gentleman had re- 
ferred, that all monkeys were born in red coats and spangles 
and that their hats and features also came by nature. He 
wished to know distinctly whether the honorable gentleman 
attributed the want of encouragement the bears had met with 
to the decline of public taste in that respect, or to a want of 
ability on the part of the bears themselves ? 

"Mr. X. X. Misty replied, that he could not bring himself 
to believe but that there must be a great deal of floating talent 
among the bears and monkeys generally ; which in the ab- 
sence of any proper encouragement, was dispersed in other 
directions. 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 463 

" Professor Pumpkinskull wished to take that oppor- 
tunity of calling the attention of the section to a most import- 
ant and serious point. The author of the treatise just read 
had alluded to the prevalent taste for bears' grease as a means 
of promoting the growth of hair, which undoubtedly was dif- 
fused to a very great and, as it appeared to him, very alarm- 
ing extent. No gentleman attending that section could fail 
to be aware of the fact that the youth of the present age 
evinced, by their behavior in the streets, and all places of public 
resort, a considerable lack of that gallantry and gentlemanly 
feeling which, in more ignorant times, had been thought be- 
coming. He wished to know whether it were possible that a 
constant outward application of bears' grease by the young 
gentlemen about town, had imperceptibly infused into those 
unhappy persons something of the nature and quality of the 
bear ? He shuddered as he threw out the remark ; but if 
this theory, on inquiry, should prove to be well-founded, it 
would at once explain a great deal of unpleasant eccentricity 
of behavior, which, without some such discovery, was wholly 
unaccountable. 

'' The President highly complimented the learned gentle- 
man on his most valuable suggestion, which produced the 
greatest effect upon the assembly ; and remarked that only a 
week previous he had seen some young gentlemen at a theatre 
eyeing a box of ladies with a fierce intensity, which nothing 
but the influence of some brutish appetite could possibly 
explain. It was dreadful to reflect that our youth were so 
rapidly verging into a generation of bears. 

" After a scene of scientific enthusiasm it was resolved that 
this important question should be immediately submitted to 
the consideration of the council. 

" The President wished to know whether any gentleman 
could inform the section what had become of the dancing- 
dogs ? 

" A Member replied, after some hesitation, that on the day 
after three glee-singers had been committed to prison as crimi- 



4G4 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

nals by a late most zealous police magistrate of tlie metropolis, 
the dogs had abandoned their professional duties, and dis- 
persed themselves in different quarters of the town to gain a 
livelihood by less dangerous means. He was given to un- 
derstand that since that period they had supported themselves 
by lying in wait for and robbing blind men's poodles. 

" Mr. Flummery exhibited a twig, claiming to be a veritable 
branch of that noble tree known to naturalists as the Shaks- 
PEARE, which has taken root in every land and climate, and 
gathered under the shade of its broad green boughs the great 
family of mankind. The learned gentleman remarked, that the 
twig had been undoubtedly called by other names in its time ; 
but that it had been pointed out to him by an old lady in 
Warwickshire, where the great tree had grown, as a shoot of 
the genuine Shakspeare, by which name he begged to intro- 
duce it to his countrymen. 

" The President wished to know what botanical definition 
the honorable gentleman could afford of the curiosity ? 

" Mr. Flummery expressed his opinion that it was a 
decided plant." 

section b. — display op models and mechanical science. 

large room, boot- jack and countenance. 

president — mr. mallet. vice-presidents— messrs. leaver 

and scroo. 

*' Mr. Crinkles exhibited a most beautiful and delicate 
machine, of a little larger size than an ordinary snutf-box, 
manufactured entirely by himself, and composed exclusively 
of steel ; by the aid of which more pockets were picked in one 
hour than by the present slow and tedious process in four- 
and-twenty. The inventor remarked that it had been put 
into active operation in Fleet Street, the Strand, and other 
thoroughfares, and had never been once known to fail. 

"After some slight delay, occasioned by the various mem- 
bers of the section buttoning their pockets. 

" The President narrowly inspected the invention, and de- 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 465 

elared that he had never seen a machine of more beautiful or 
exquisite construction. Would the inventor be good enough 
to inform the section whether he had taken any and what 
means for bringing it into general operation ? 

"Mr. Crinkles stated, that after encountering some pre- 
liminary difficulties, he had succeeded in putting himself in 
communication with Mr. Fogle Hunter, and other gentlemen 
connected with the swell mob, who had awarded the inven- 
tion the very highest and most unqualified approbation. He 
regretted to say, however, that those distinguished practition- 
ers, in common with a gentleman of the name of Gimlet-eyed- 
Toramy, and other members of a secondary grade of the pro- 
fession whom he was understood to represent, entertained an 
insuperable objection to its being brought into general use, on 
the ground that it would have the inevitable effect of almost 
entirely superseding manual labor, and throwing a great num- 
ber of highly-deserving persons out of employment. 

" The President hoped that no such fanciful objections 
would be allowed to stand in the way of such a great public 
improvement. 

" Mr. Crinkles hoped so too ; but he feared that if the gen- 
tlemen of the swell mob persevered in their objection, nothing 
could be done. 

" Professor Grime suggested, that surely in that case, 
Her Majesty's government might be prevailed upon to take 
it up. 

"Mr. Crinkles said, that if the objection were found to be 
insuperable, he should apply to Parliament, who he thought 
could not fail to recognize the utility of the invention. 

"The President observed, that up to his time Parliament 
had certainly got on very well without it ; but as they did their 
business on a very large scale, he had no doubt they would 
gladly adopt the improvement. His only fear was that the 
machine might be worn out by constant working. 

" Mr. Coppernose called the attention of the section to a 
proposition of great magnitude and interest, illustrated by a 



466 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

vast number of models, and stated with much clearness and 
perspicuity in a treatise entitled * Practical Suggestions on the 
necessity of providing some harmless and wholesome relaxa- 
tion for the young noblemen of England.' His proposition 
was that a space of ground of not less than ten miles in length 
and four in breadth should be purchased by a new company, 
to be incorporated by act of Parliament, and inclosed by a 
brick wall of not less than twelve feet in height. He pro- 
posed that it should be laid out with highway roads, turnpikes, 
bridges, miniature villages, and every object that could con- 
duce to the comfort and glory of Four-in-hand Clubs, so that 
they might be fairly presumed to require no drive beyond it. 
This delightful retreat would be fitted up with most commo- 
dious and extensive stables for the convenience of such of the no- 
bility and gentry as had a taste for ostlering, and with houses of 
entertainment furnished in the most expensive and handsome 
style. It would be further provided with whole streets of 
door-knockers and bell-handles of extra size, so constructed 
that they could be easily wrenched off at night, and regularly 
screwed on again by attendants provided for the purpose, 
every day. There would also be gas-lamps of real glass, 
which could be broken at a comparatively small expense per 
dozen, and a broad and handsome foot-pavement for gentlemen 
to drive their cabriolets upon when they were humorously dis- 
posed — for the full enjoyment of which feat live pedestrians 
would be procured from the workhouse at a very small charge 
per head. The place being inclosed and carefully screened from 
the intrusion of the public, there would be no objections to gen- 
tlemen laying aside any article of their costume that was con- 
sidered to interfere with a pleasant frolic, or indeed to their 
walking about without any costume at all, if they liked that 
better. In short, every facility of enjoyment would be af- 
forded that the most gentlemanly person could possibly desire. 
But as even these advantages would be incomplete, unless 
there were some means provided of enabling the nobility and 
gentry to display their prowess when they sallied forth after 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 46t 

dinner, and as some inconvenience might be experienced in the 
event of their being reduced to the necessity of pummelling each 
other, the inventor had turned his. attention to the construction 
of an entirely new police force, composed exclusively of automa- 
ton figures, which, with the assistance of the ingenious Signor 
Gagliardi, of Windmill-street in the Haymarket, he had suc- 
ceeded in making with such nicety, that a policeman, cab-driver, 
or old woman, made upon the principle of the models exhibited, 
would walk about until knocked down like any real man ; nay 
more, if set upon and beaten by six or eight noblemen or gentle- 
men, after it was down, the figure would utter divers groans 
mingled with entreaties for mercy; thus rendering the illusion 
complete, and the enjoyment perfect. But the invention did not 
stop even here, for station-houses would be built, containing 
good beds for noblemen and gentlemen during the night, and 
in the morning they would repair to a commodious police 
office where a pantomimic investigation would take place be- 
fore automaton magistrates, — quite equal to life, — who would 
fine them so many counters, with which they would be pre- 
viously provided for the purpose. This office would be fur- 
nished with an inclined plane for the convenience of any 
nobleman or gentleman who might wish to bring in his horse 
as a witness, and the prisoners would be at perfect liberty, as 
they were now, to interrupt the complainants as much as they 
pleased, and to make any remarks that they thought proper. 
The charge for those amusements would amount to very little 
more than they already cost, and the inventor submitted that 
the public would be much benefited and comforted by the 
proposed arrangement. 

" Professor Nogo wished to be informed what amount of 
automaton police force it was proposed to raise in the first 
instance. 

"Mr. Coppernose replied that it was proposed to begin with 
seven divisions of police of a score each, lettered from A to Gr 
inclusive. It was proposed that not -more than half the num- 
ber should be placed on active duty, and that the remainder 



468 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

should be kept on shelves in the police office, ready to be 
called out at a moment's notice. 

** The President, awarding the utmost merit to the ingeni- 
ous gentleman who had originated the idea, doubted whether 
the automaton police would quite answer the purpose. He 
feared that noblemen and gentlemen would perhaps require 
the excitement of threshing Hving subjects. 

" Mr. Coppernose submitted, that as the usual odds in 
such cases were ten noblemen or gentleman to one policeman 
or cab-driver, it could make very little difference in point of 
excitement whether the policeman or cab-driver were a man 
or a block. The great advantage would be, that a policeman's 
limb might be knocked off, and yet he would be in a condition 
to do duty next day. He might even give his evidence next 
morning with his head in his hand, and give it equally well. 

" Professor Muff. — Will you allow me to ask you, sir, of 
what materials it is intended that the magistrates' heads shall 
be composed ? 

"Mr. Coppernose. — The magistrates will have wooden 
heads of course, and they will be made of the toughest and 
thickest materials that can possibly be obtained. 

" Professor Muff, — I am quite satisfied. This is a great 
invention. 

" Professor Nogo. — I see but one objection to it. It ap- 
pears to me that the magistrates ought to talk. 

" Mr. Coppernose no sooner heard this suggestion than he 
touched a small spring in each of the two models of magis- 
trates which were placed upon the table ; one of the figures 
immediately began to exclaim with great volubility that he 
was sorry to see gentlemen in such a situation, and the other 
to express a fear that the policeman was intoxicated. 

" The section as with one accord declared with a shout of 
applause that the invention was complete ; and the President, 
much excited, retired with Mr. Coppernose to lay it before the 
council. On his return, . 

" Mr. Tickle displayed his newly-invented spectacles, 



SECOND MEETING-MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 4G9 

which enabled the wearer to discern in very bright colors ob- 
jects at a great distance, and rendered him wholly blind to 
those immediately before him. It was he said a most valuable 
and useful invention, based strictly upon the principle of the 
human eye. 

" The President required some information upon this point. 
He had yet to learn that the human eye was remarkable for 
the peculiarities of which the honorable gentleman had spoken. 

" Mr. Tickle was rather astonished to hear this, when the 
President could not fail to be aware that a large number of 
most excellent persons and great statesmen could see with the 
naked eye, most marvellous horrors on West India plantations, 
while they could discern nothing whatever in the interior of 
Manchester cotton-mills. He must know too with what quick- 
ness of perception most people could discover their neighbor's 
faults, and how very blind they were to their own. If the 
President differed from the great majority of men in this re- 
spect, his eye was a defective one, and it was to assist his 
vision that these glasses were made. 

" Mr. Blank exhibited a model of a fashionable annual, 
composed of copper-plates, gold leaf, and silk boards, and 
worked entirely by milk and water. 

" Mr. Prosee, after examining the machine, declared it to 
be so ingeniously composed, that he was wholly unable to dis- 
cover how it went on at all. 

"Mr. Blank. — Nobody can, and that is the beauty of it." 

SECTION C. — ANATOMY AND MEDICINE. 

bar-room, BLACK BOY AND STOMACH-ACHE. 

PRESIDENT; — DR. SOEMUP. VICE-PRESIDENTS — MESSRS. PESSELL 

AND MORTAIR. 

*' Dr. Grummtdge stated to the section a most interesting 
case of monomania, and described the course of treatment he 
had pursued with perfect success. The patient was a married 
lady in the middle rank of life, who having seen another lady 



4Y0 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

at an evening party in a full suit of pearls, was suddenly 
seized with a desire to possess a similar equipment, although 
her husband's finances were by no means equal to the necessary 
outlay. Finding her wish ungratified, she fell sick, and the 
symptoms soon became so alarming, that he, Dr. Grummidge, 
was called in. At this period the prominent tokens of the 
disorder were sullenness, a total indisposition to perform do- 
mestic duties, great peevishness and extreme languor, except 
when pearls were mentioned, at which times the pulse quick- 
ened, the eyes grew brighter, the pupils dilated, and the 
patient, after various incoherent exclamations, burst into a pas- 
sion of tears and exclaimed that nobody cared for her, and 
that she wished herself dead. Finding that the patient's ap- 
petite was affected in the presence of company, he began 
by ordering a total abstinence from all stimulants, and forbid- 
ding any sustenance but weak gruel ; he then took twenty 
ounces of blood, applied a blister under each ear, one 
upon the chest and another on the back; having done which, 
and administered five grains of calomel, he left the patient to 
her repose. The next day she was somewhat low, but decidedly 
better; and all appearances of irritation were removed. Tlie 
next day she improved still further, and on the next again. 
On the fourth there was some appearance of a return of the 
old symptoms, which no sooner developed themselves than he 
administered another dose of calomel, and left strict orders, 
that unless a decidedly favorable change occurred within two 
hours, the patient's head should be immediately shaved to the 
very last curl. From that moment she began to mend, and in 
less than four-and-twenty hours was perfectly restored ; she 
did not now betray the least emotion at the sight or mention 
of pearls or any other ornaments. She was cheerful and good- 
humored, and a most beneficial change had been effected in her 
whole temperament and condition. 

"Mr. Pipkin, M. R. C. S., read a short but most interesting 
communication in which he sought to prove the complete belief 
of Sir William Courtenay, otherwise Thorn, recently shot at 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 471 

Canterbury, in the Homoeopathic system. The section would 
bear in mind that one of the Homoeopathic doctrines was, that 
infiuitesimal doses of any medicine which would occasion the 
disease under which the patient labored, supposing him to be 
in a healthy state, would cure it. Now it was a remarkable 
circumstance — proved in the evidence — that the diseased Thom 
employed a woman to follow him about all day with a pail of 
water, assuring her that one drop, a purely homoeopathic rem- 
edy, the section would observe, placed upon his tongue after 
death, would restore him. What was the obvious inference ? 
That Thom, who was marching and countermarching in osier 
beds, and other swampy places, was impressed with a presenti- 
ment that he should be drowned ; in which case had his in- 
structions been complied with, he could not fail to have been 
brought to life again instantly by his own prescriptions. As 
it was, if this woman, or any other person, had administered 
an infinitesimal dose of lead and gunpowder immediately after 
he fell, he would have recovered forthwith. But unhappily 
the woman concerned did not possess the power of reasoning 
by analogy, or carrying out a principle, and thus the unfortu- 
nate gentleman had been sacrificed to the ignorance of the 
peasantry." 

SECTION D. — STATISTICS. 

OUT-HOUSE, BLACK BOY AND STOMACH-ACHE. 

PRESIDENT — MR. SLUG. VICE-PRESIDENTS— MESSRS. NOAKES AND 

STYLES. 

"Mr. Kwakley stated the result of some most ingenious 
statistical inquiries relative to the difference between the value 
of the qualification of several members of Parliament as pub- 
lished to the world, and its real nature and amount. After 
reminding the section that every member of Parliament for a 
town or borough was supposed to possess a clear freehold 
estate of three hundred pounds per annum, the honorable gen- 
tleman excited great amusement and laughter by stating the 



472 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

exact amount of freehold property possessed by a column of 
legislators, in which he had included himself. It appeared 
from this table that the amount of such income possessed by 
each was pounds, shillings, and pence, yielding an aver- 
age of the same. — Great laughter. — It was pretty well known 
that there were accommodating gentlemen in the habit of fur- 
nishing new members with temporary qualifications, to the 
ownership of which they swore solemnly — of course as a mere 
matter of form. He argued from these data that it was wholly 
unnecessary for members of Parliament to possess any property 
at all, especially as when they had none, the public could get 
them so much cheaper." 

SUPPLEMENTARY SECTION E. — UMBUQCLOGY AND DITCH- 
WATERISTICS. 

PRESIDENT — MR. GRUB. VICE-PRESIDENTS — MESSRS. DULL AND 

DUMMY. 

" A paper was read by the secretary descriptive of a bay 
pony with one eye, which had been seen by the author stand- 
ing in a butcher's cart at the corner of Newgate Market. The 
communication described the author of the paper as having 
in the prosecution of a mercantile pursuit, betaken himself one 
Saturday morning last summer from Somers Town to Cheap- 
side ; in the course of which expedition he had beheld the 
extraordinary appearance above described. The pony had one 
distinct eye, and it had been pointed out to him by his friend 
Captain Blunderbore of the Horse Marines, who assisted the 
nuthor in his search, that whenever he winked this eye he 
jvhisked his tail, possibly to drive the flies off, but that he always 
winked and whisked at the same time. The animal was lean, 
spavined, and tottering ; and the author proposed to constitute 
it of the family of Fitfordogsmeataurious. It certainly did 
occur to him that there was no case on record of a pony with 
one clearly-defined and distinct organ of vision, winking and 
whisking at the same moment. 



SECOND MEETING— MUDFOG ASSOCIATION. 473 

" Mr. Q. J. Snuffletoffle had heard of a pony winking 
his eye, and likewise of a pony whisking his tail, but whether 
they were two ponies or the same pony he could not undertake 
positively to say. At all events he was acquainted with no 
authenticated instance of a simultaneous winking and whisk- 
ing, and he really could not but doubt the existence of such a 
marvellous pony in opposition to all those natural laws by 
which ponies were governed. Referring however to the mere 
question of his one organ of vision, might he suggest the 
possibility of this pony having been literally half asleep at the 
time he was seen, and having closed only one eye ? 

"The President observed, that whether the pony was half 
asleep or fast asleep, there could be no doubt that the associa- 
tion was awake, and therefore that they had better get the 
business over and go to dinner. He had certainly never seen 
anything analogous to this pony ; but he was not prepared to 
doubt its existence, for he had seen many queerer ponies in 
his time, though he did not pretend to have seen any more 
remarkable donkeys than the other gentlemen around him. 

" Professor John Ketch was then called upon to exhibit 
the skull of the late Mr. Greenacre, which he produced from 
a blue bag, remarking, on being invited to make any observa- 
tions that occurred to him, 'that he'd pound it as that 'ere 
'spectable section had never seed a more gamerer cove nor 
he vos.' 

"A most animated discussion upon this interesting relic 
ensued ; and some difference of opinion arising respecting the 
real character of the deceased gentleman, Mr. Blubb delivered 
a lecture upon the cranium before him, clearly showing that 
Mr. Greenacre possessed the organ of destructivenoss to a 
most unusual extent, ^vith a most remarkable development of 
the organ of carveativeness. Sir Hookham Snivej/ was pro- 
ceeding to combat this opinion, when Professor Ketch sud- 
denly interrupted the proceedings by exclaiming, with great 
excitement of manner, ' Walker !' 

"The President begged to call the learned gentleman to 
order. 



474 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

''Professor Ketch. — 'Order be blowed ! youVe got the 
wrong 'un, I tell you. It ain't no 'ed at all ; it's a coker-nut 
as my brother-in-law has been acarvin' to hornaraent his new- 
baked 'tatur-stall vots a-coming down here vile the 'socia- 
tion's in the town. Hand over, vill you ?' 

" With these words Professor Ketch hastily repossessed him- 
self of the cocoa-nut, and drew forth the skull, in mistake for 
which he had exhibited it. A most interesting conversation 
ensued ; but as there appeared some doubt ultimately wliether 
the skull was Mr. Greenacre's or a hospital patient's, or a 
pauper's, or a man's, or a woman's, or a monkey's, no particular 
result was attained." 

"I cannot," says our talented correspondent in conclusion, 
" I cannot close my account of these gigantic researches and 
sublime and noble triumphs, without repeating a bon mot of 
Professor Woodensconce's, which shows how the greatest 
minds may occasionally unbend, when truth can be presented 
to listening ears, clothed in an attractive and playful form. I 
was standing by, when after a week of feasting and feeding, 
that learned gentleman accompanied by the whole body of 
wonderful men entered the hall yesterday, where a sumptuous 
dinner was prepared ; where the richest wines sparkled on the 
board, and fat bucks — propitiatory sacrifices to learning — sent 
forth their savory odors. ' Ah !' said Professor Wooden sconce, 
rubbing his hands, ' this is what we meet for ; this is what in- 
spires us; this is what keeps us together, and beckons us 
onward ; this is the spread of science, and a glorious spread 
itisl'" 



THACKERAY.— IN MEMORIAM. 

BY CHAELES DICKENS. 

It has been desired by some of the personal friends of the 
great English writer who established this magazine, [The 
Cornhill,'] that its brief record of his having been stricken 
from among men should be written by the old comrade and 
brother in arms who pens these lines, and of whom he often 
wrote himself, and always with the warmest generosity. 

I saw him first, nearly twenty -eight years ago, when he pro- 
posed to become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw 
him last, shortly before Christmas, at the Athenaeum Club, 
when he told me that he had been in bed three days — that, 
after these attacks, he was troubled with cold shiverings, 
"which quite took the power of work out of him" — and that 
he had it in his mind to try a new remedy W'hich he laugh- 
ingly described. He was very cheerful and looked very 
bright. In the night of that day week, he died. 

The long interval between those tw^o periods is marked in 
my remembrance of him by many occasions when he was su- 
premely humorous, when he was irresistibly extravagant, when 
he was softened and serious, when he was charming with 
children. But, by none do I recall him more tenderly than 
by two or three that start out of the crowd, when he unex- 
pectedly presented himself in my room, announcing how that 
some passage in a certain book had made him cry yesterday, 
and how that he had come to dinner, " because he couldn't 
help it," and must talk such passage over. No one can ever 
have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and honestly 
impulsive, than I have seen him at these times. No one can 
be surer than I, of the greatness and the goodness of the 
heart that then disclosed itself. 

(475) 



476 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

We liad our differences of opinion. I thought that he too 
much feigned a want of earnestness, and that he made a pre- 
tence of undervaluing his art, which was not good for the art 
that he held in trust. But, when we fell upon these topics, it 
was never very gravely, and I have a lively image of him in 
my mind, twisting both his hands in his hair, and stamping 
about, laughing, to make an end of the discussion. 

When we were associated in remembrance of the late Mr. 
Douglas Jerrold, he delivered a public lecture in London, in 
the course of which, he read his very best contribution to 
Punch, describing the grown-up cares of a poor family of 
young children. No one hearing him could have doubted his 
natural gentleness, or his thoroughly unaffected manly sym- 
pathy with the weak and lowly. He read the paper most pa- 
thetically, and with a simplicity of tenderness that certainly 
moved one of his audience to tears. This was presently 
after his standing for Oxford, from which place he had 
dispatched his agent to me, with a droll note (to which 
he afterwards added a verbal postscript), urging me to " come 
down and make a speech, and tell them who he was, for he 
doubted whether more than two of the electors had ever heard 
of him, and he thought there might be as many as six or eight 
who had heard of me." He introduced the lecture just men- 
tioned, with a reference to his late electioneering failure, 
which was full of good sense, good spirits, and good humor. 

He had a particular delight in boys, and an excellent way 
with them. I reuiember his once asking me with fantastic 
gravity, when he had been to Eton where my eldest son then 
was, whether I felt as he did in regard of never seeing a boy 
without wanting instantly to give him a sovereign ? I thought 
of this when I looked dowm into his grave, after he was laid 
there, for I looked down into it over the shoulder of a boy to 
whom he had been kind. 

These are slight remembrances ; but it is to little familiar 
things suggestive of the voice, look, manner, never, never 
more to be encountered on this earth, that the mind first turns 



THACKERAY.— IN MEMORIAM. 4^ 

in a bereavement. And greater things that are known of him, 
in the way of his warm affections, his quiet endurance, his un- 
selfish thoughtfulness for others, and his munificent hand, 
may not be told. 

If, in the reckless vivacity of his youth, his satirical pen had 
ever gone astray or done amiss, he had caused it to prefer its 
own petition for forgiveness, long before : 

I've writ the foolish fanc}^ of his brain ; 

The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain; 

The idle word that he'd wish back again. 

In no pages should I take it upon myself at this time to 
discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, 
of his subtle acquaintance wdth the weaknesses of human nature, 
of his delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and 
touching ballads, of his mastery over the English language. 
Least of all, in these pages, enriched by his brilliant qualities 
from the first of the series, and beforehand accepted by the 
Public through the strength of his great name. 

But, on the table before me, there lies all that he had writ- 
ten of his latest and last story. That it would be very sad to 
any one — that it is inexpressibly so to a writer — in its evidences 
of matured designs never to be accomplished, of intentions 
begun to be executed and destined never to be completed, of 
careful preparation for long roads of thought that he was 
never to traverse, and for shining goals that he was never to 
reach, will be readily believed. The pain, however, that I 
have felt in perusing it, has not been deeper than the convic- 
tion that he was in the healthiest vigor of his powers when 
he wrought on this last labor. In respect of earnest feeling, 
far-seeing purpose, character, incident, and a certain loving 
picturesqueness blending the whole, I believe it to be much 
the best of all his works. That he fully meant it to be so, 
that he had become strongly attached to it, and that he be- 
sto\^ed great pains upon it, I trace in almost every page. It 
contains one picture which must have caused him extreme dis- 
tress, and which is a masterpiece. There are two children in 

.^0 



478 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

it, touched with a hand as loving and tender as ever a father 
caressed his little child with. There is some young love, as 
pure and innocent and pretty as the truth. And it is very 
remarJiable that, by reason of the singular construction of the 
story, more than one main incident usually belonging to the 
end of such a fiction is anticipated in the beginning, and thus 
there is an approach to completeness in the fragment, as to 
the satisfaction of the reader's mind concerning the most in- 
teresting persons, which could hardly have been better at- 
tained if the writer's breaking-off had been foreseen. 

The last line he wrote, and the last proof he corrected, are 
among these papers through which I have so sorrowfully made 
my way. The condition of the little pages of manuscript 
where Death stopped his hand, shows that he had carried them 
about, and often taken them out of his pocket here and there, 
for patient revision and interlineation. The last words he 
corrected in print, were, " And my heart throbbed with ex- 
quisite bliss." God grant that on that Christmas Eve when 
he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as 
he had been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness 
of duty done and Christian hope throughout life humbly cher- 
ished, may have caused his own heart so to throb, when he 
passed away to his Redeemer's rest I 

He was found peacefully lying as above described, com- 
posed, undisturbed, and to all appearance asleep, on the twen- 
ty-fourth of December, 1863. He was only in his fifty-third 
year ; so young a man, that the mother who blessed him in 
his first sleep, blessed him in his last. Twenty years before, 
he had written, after being in a white squall: 

And when, its force expended, 
The harmless storm was ended, 
And, as the sunrise splendid 

Came blushing o'er the sea ; 
I thought, as day was breaking, 
My little girls were waking. 
And smiling, and making 

A prayer at home for me. 



THACKERAY.— IN MEMORIAM. 479 

Those little girls had grown to be women when the mourn- 
ful day broke that saw their father 13'ing dead. In those 
twenty years of companionship with him, they had learned 
much from him ; and one of them has a literary course be- 
fore her, worthy of her famous name. 

On the bright wintry day, the last but one of the old year, 
he was laid in his grave at Kensal Green, there to mingle the 
dust to which the mortal part of him had returned, with that 
of a third child, lost in her infancy, years ago. The heads of 
a great concourse of his fellow- workers in the Arts, were bowed 
around his tomb. 



THE END, 



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